CoLu Week 2016
by rhosinthorn
Summary: All prompts for CoLu Week 2016 can be found here. Eternity, Excuses, Online, Color, Answers, Raspberry, Energy, and Aurora.
1. Eternity

**Eternity**

 _Snakeboy 1:04 PM:_ Bad news. Mest can't do it.

 _Stargirl 1:07 PM:_ What? I thought we checked…

 _Snakeboy 1:08 PM:_ Not in this state. He doesn't have the right qualifications.

 _Stargirl 1:11 PM:_ Okay. City Hall?

 _Snakeboy 1:14 PM:_ Seems like. Midnight gets back on Friday.

 _Stargirl 1:16 PM:_ I'll make an appointment for Saturday morning then.

 _Stargirl 1:30 PM:_ The only time we could get was 11:30 AM. Does that work?

 _Snakeboy 1:35 PM:_ I'll tell Mest. You tell your brother.

* * *

 _Little Sis 1:37 PM:_ Hey, Erik and I are planning a nice lunch to celebrate Macbeth coming home. Are you free Saturday at 11:00?

 _Big Brother 1:44 PM:_ Sure, but doesn't he go out of town all the time?

 _Little Sis 1:47 PM:_ So what? We haven't all gone out to a nice restaurant in a while.

 _Big Brother 1:48 PM:_ Okay, where do I meet you?

 _Little Sis 1:50 PM:_ We'll all meet at the house and Erik will drive. Just dress nice- not jeans and a tee shirt. One of your nicer shirts and khakis or something.

 _Big Brother 1:52 PM:_ Yes ma'am.

* * *

 _Dory 1:05 PM:_ Wait. Why did you ask me that?

 _Dory 1:10 PM:_ Cobra, answer the damn question.

 _Dory 1:15 PM:_ Oi, your lab better be blowing up if you're not answering your phone.

 _Dory 1:20 PM:_ Cobra, you better not be planning what I think you're planning.

 _Dory 1:25 PM:_ COBRA I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE THE FALL FOR YOU WHEN EVERYONE HEARS ABOUT THIS.

 _Dory 1:30 PM:_ Oh dear gods you're doing this.

 _Dory 1:35 PM:_ I also can't officiate at your funeral, just so you're aware before you ask.

 _Cobra 1:39 PM:_ Keep your pants on. How did you survive alphabet soup with deductive skills like that?

 _Cobra 1:40 PM:_ And no, my lab wasn't blowing up. I was talking with Lucy.

 _Cobra 1:41 PM:_ Look, you've obviously hacked into City Hall's appointment scheduling. You know the time and the place. Show up. Bring your girlfriend. Dress nice.

 _Dory 1:42 PM:_ And you think this is a good idea how? Mira has a whole scrapbook of planning. A SCRAPBOOK. Cana's been trying to read the date in the cards. Anyone who's there will be caught in the crossfire.

 _Cobra 1:43 PM:_ Show up.

 _Dory 1:45 PM:_ Don't say I didn't warn you.

 _Dory 1:47 PM:_ What do I tell Wendy?

 _Dory 1:49 PM:_ Are we lying about this or are we telling the truth?

 _Dory 1:50 PM:_ Cobra?

 _Cobra 1:52 PM:_ Don't tell her until Saturday, then steal her phone until it's over. Now stop bothering me, or else. Or you could just lie. Isn't that part of what you're supposed to do for a living?

* * *

The doorbell rang, and Lucy scampered to answer it, careful not to mess up her hair. Throwing it open, she beamed at the hulking blond waiting on the steps, shivering slightly at the cool November afternoon.

"Laxus!" she squealed, stepping out of the way. "Come in! Erik's just gone to pick up Kina, and then we'll leave."

"So, it's just Erik, Macbeth, and Kinana joining us for lunch?" her brother in all but blood asked, slipping his shoes off as he hovered in the entryway. "Won't you and Kinana feel outnumbered?"

"We'll be fine," Lucy assured him, returning to the living room and the man snoozing on the couch. "Macbeth, Erik will be back with Kina soon. You might want to wake up."

Blinking slowly, the black haired man looked up at her. "Remind me why you had to plan this for today?"

"Because you were coming home!" Lucy said, reaching for the purse she left on the coffee table. "I think I hear them in the driveway now."

A car horn honked, and Laxus called from the entryway: "Lucy, your boyfriend's back."

"Good, now let's go. We don't want to be late!"

* * *

Mest Gryder approached the steps of City Hall with the air of a man approaching his execution. At his side, Wendy Marvell tugged at his hand, trying to distract him with questions. "Mest, why are we meeting Lucy and Erik here? I thought you said we were going to lunch with them? Is this why you've been off since Tuesday?"

All the man could manage to get out was a string of mostly incomprehensible words, including 'she-demon', 'snake idiot', and 'death of us all'. It didn't do anything to placate his girlfriend, instead making her redouble her interrogation efforts. However, when he turned, seemingly on autopilot towards the clerk's office, the medical student stopped in her tracks, clapping her hands together in glee. "They're eloping, aren't they?" she whispered excitedly.

He turned back to his girlfriend, dull eyed. "Wendy, you don't understand. _Mira is going to kill them._ Her scrapbook was for nothing. All of her planning was for nothing."

"How do you know?" Wendy asked as they continued to head towards the clerk's office. "If Mira doesn't know yet, then nobody else knows, but somehow you knew?"

"Erik asked to see if it was legal for me to officiate a marriage. Despite my numerous credentials, that's one thing I'm not allowed to do." Mest held open the door so that his girlfriend could walk through. "After he stopped responding to me, I hacked into the city appointments system and found out that Lucy had just made an appointment for a civil service. I'm the only one outside the two of them who know."

"We're their witnesses?" Wendy asked softly as they took a seat, waiting for the bride and groom to arrive. "But what about Laxus? And Kinana and Macbeth?"

"No clue," Mest mumbled, dropping his head in his hands. "But you do understand that when word gets out, Mira's going to kill me for keeping this a secret from her, right?"

"Oh, you'll be fine," Wendy huffed, pinching his side so that he sat up with a yelp. "And besides, didn't you face down that one terrorist from Tartarous by yourself? The mad bomber? What's Mira, who works as a bartender, got on him?"

Mest paled. "Wendy, you do know that Mira was recruited as a kid after her parents died, right? They used to call her the She-devil, until her sister disappeared and she dropped out. There's a reason all of the government guys go to her bar, and not the ones nearer to their offices."

"Oh," Wendy murmured, obviously rethinking her opinion of the sweet, white-haired owner of _Fairy Tail_ , a bar she had discovered for the first time when her cousin dragged her along after work one day, saying she needed a break from all of the studying. "Well then. Let's hope you get an out of town assignment before the news gets out?"

* * *

As Erik parked the car, he ignored Laxus wondering why they were at City Hall and met Lucy's eyes in the rearview mirror. His girlfriend…fiancée, whatever she was right now, was practically radiant with happiness, bouncing slightly in her seat as she chatted amiably with Kinana and tried to wake Macbeth from where he had fallen asleep against the window. As they got out of the car, he dropped back to walk with Macbeth, watching as Kinana and Lucy conversed, sure that somehow Lucy had let Kina in on the secret while keeping Laxus and Macbeth in the dark.

"So, you two finally decided to take the plunge?" Macbeth asked quietly, as Laxus hurried to catch up with Lucy, demanding answers that she kept evading with all the skill of one their ex-CIA friends.

 _Or Macbeth is just really good about reading the subtext_. "Yeah," Erik said, eyes fixed on the woman who was his entire life. "We did."

"Any particular reason you waited until now to tell us?" Macbeth said nonchalantly, as ahead of them Laxus seemed to be drawing his own conclusions, cycling through happiness and anger.

"Mira's been planning this for ages," Erik muttered. "Lucy got overwhelmed every time she looked at a wedding magazine, and the women at the bar would have made this an affair to rival the Royal Wedding. So we decided just to do this our way, without telling anyone. We were going to get Mest to officiate, and just have it at the house, but…"

"He doesn't have the credentials, I'm guessing," Macbeth filled in. "And even though he probably could have falsified the credentials, you two wanted to make sure this was legit."

"How did you find out?" Erik asked curiously. "You've been on the other side of the country for two months?"

"I know you," Macbeth said with a yawn. "The only thing you're more secretive about than your poisons is your personal life. So when I can't get a straight answer about where we're going, or why it has to be today…there's no way your poisons are involved, so it has to be your personal life. And just as a reminder, Sora's going to be pissed."

Erik winced. "Don't remind me," he begged. "But she would have told Mira…"

They had reached the clerk's office at this point, and Lucy was being practically tackled to the ground by Mest's girlfriend. The man himself was almost at the point of rocking himself in the fetal position. Crossing the room to him, Erik clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks for coming Mest," he said, finding that he actually meant it. "Don't worry, I'll tell Mira that it wasn't your fault."

"Thanks," the other man muttered, uncurling slightly. "Now, can we get this over with, before someone says something, and it makes its way back to Mira, and she shows up just in time to yell that she objects."

"I'm all for starting," Lucy said from where she stood clustered with Kina, Wendy, and Laxus, her brother seemingly torn between berating her for not telling him and happy that she was getting married. "Erik, you ready for the big reveal?"

"If you are," he said, catching the excitement in her eyes, as he reached for his right shoulder. "On the count of three, or separately?"

"Count of three. One, two…"

"Three," he said, and separated the sleeve of his white dress shirt from the rest of the shirt, pulling it off to reveal the elaborate tattoo that now decorated his arm. Across the room, Lucy had slipped out of her overcoat, revealing a pretty white dress with one lace sleeve on her left, but her right arm was left bare to display her own tattoo.

Everyone around them was talking, asking questions, and demanding answers, but Erik smiled at the woman he was about to marry and gestured towards the exasperated public official standing at the front of the office. "Shall we?"

Laxus intervened first, taking Lucy's hand and guiding her to where the official stood. As Erik approached, he felt himself being studied, the same way the blonde man had studied him when Lucy first introduced the two in his role as her newest housemate.

"You better take care of her," the other man said softly, relinquishing Lucy's hand to place it in Erik's. "We may not be siblings in any type of official capacity, but she's been like my little sister since the night you introduced us."

That night. It was surprising that Laxus mentioned it, since it had been the basis for the tattoo. With a soft smile, Lucy squeezed his hand, before shifting so that the lines of their tattoo aligned perfectly.

The onlookers gasped, and Erik knew that the significance wasn't wasted on them. A double oroboros, wrapped into an infinity sign. As the official began the litany of the ceremony, Erik kept his eyes on the woman across from him, marveling at how his life had changed since the night he met the vivacious blonde.

It was time for the vows. He dutifully repeated the standard vows, as he and Lucy had chosen for the ceremony, before sliding into the vows he had written himself, voice faltering as he kept his eyes fixed on Lucy's own brown eyes.

"I, Erik, take thee Lucy to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish."

"But I do not swear these for as long as we both live, or until death do us part, because I believe our love is eternal. So I swear to you, that I will be by your side and part of your soul until the end of all things, and even beyond then. For without you I am but half of what I should be."

Lucy's eyes glistened with tears as she repeated the standard vows as he had, before breaking into her own.

"And like you, I do not pledge myself until death, for our love exceeds that boundary. I do not know when I realized that you were my other half, but I know that to separate us now would make me nothing like what I should be. As you bind yourself to me, I bind myself to you, knowing that whatever befalls us, our love will persevere."

Erik hardly heard the closing of the ceremony, until the familiar words: _You may now kiss the bride_ fell upon his ears, and he swept Lucy up, holding her tightly before giving in and pressing his lips against hers. He didn't know how long they stayed like that, but when he started listening to the outside world again, the others were clapping, and Kina was crying, and Laxus was wolf-whistling like it was another rowdy night in _Fairy Tail_ …

But as they separated, and he looked at Lucy's smiling face, undimmed by the happy tears that were streaming down and smudging her mascara, he knew that this would be one of those memories that lasted, a moment as eternal as the love they shared.

 *****Okay. This is rushed, and Beta didn't get a chance to read any of it, so any mistakes/awfulness/atrocious grammar...that's all my fault.**

 **In other news...writer's block is terrible. I'm getting very little progress done on any of my projects, and none of these are written outside of this one. So...welcome to the seat-of-the-pants approach to CoLu Week 2016. Feel free to leave any and all criticism in a review or PM. I know that I'm going to have all of these set in the same universe, so anything that doesn't quite make sense about the background, I'll try to explain later this week. Signing off for now while I contemplate tomorrow's prompt.*****


	2. Excuses

**Excuses:**

Music was throbbing, the lights were dim, and all around him were the scents of overdone perfume and alcohol.

 _Just another welcoming party for the freshmen._

Erik pushed through the crowds of partygoers, not caring about the drinks he spilled or the elbows he threw on his path to the kitchen, where the occupants of the Raijinshu House were holding court. He had stopped by as a courtesy to them, even if he'd much rather be in the quiet labs, working on his latest hunch. But Laxus had been a friend to him in the past few years, and if appearing once at one of these ridiculous excuses to drink yourself into a stupor would solidify that friendship, then he would appear.

He spared a passing thought to wish that one of his friends could be there. But the members of the Oracion Seis, the gang that once ruled the streets until a group of federal agents took out the ringleader and rehabilitated the rest of them…Erik had to snort. They didn't so much _rehabilitate_ as they did _direct their criminal knowledge into useful pursuits_. Hence why he was studying toxicology at a doctorate level, and the others were all in the middle of training to become DEA agents. The little group of five kids who had once controlled the drug trafficking of an entire _city_ would now be working for the other side.

A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he saw a flash of blonde fleeing up the stairway. Frowning, he changed course immediately. Laxus and his housemates never let anyone upstairs during their house parties, not even to use the bathrooms. It was supposed to be a security measure, to prevent anyone from stealing their stuff. Whoever was going upstairs had to _want_ to get up there, since Erik knew from experience that Freed and Laxus placed heavy bookshelves at the foot of the stairs to prevent casual wandering.

From across the room, he saw someone else climb haphazardly over the banister, and he sped up. Laxus was the only blonde allowed upstairs, and Erik knew the other man should be stationed in the kitchen, monitoring the drinks to make sure nobody got into anything they shouldn't. And the drunken brunette that had just clambered over the banister wasn't Evergreen. Or even female.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he vaulted nimbly over, landing with a thump that could barely be heard under normal circumstances, let alone over the noise of the party. Creeping up the stairs, he kept his ears open for any unusual sounds. If the trespassers were just drunk freshmen who had no idea that they were out of bounds, he'd scare the living daylights out of them and send them back downstairs. However, if they were thieves…

He couldn't help the grin that crept over his face. After all, _he_ had been the most feared of the Seis. The one Brain sent when it was past time to pay up, when the only acceptable price was _your life_. You could put a snake in a cage, dress it up to look like something nonthreatening, but the snake would still be just as dangerous as it had always been. Erik didn't take to too many people, and those he did accept into his life, he'd protect with everything he had. Even if the opponents were petty thieves.

In all honesty, he reflected, reaching the top step and listening for sounds of movement, he probably wouldn't do much to them. Hand them over to Laxus, call the cops…that was about it. Anything else wasn't worth the time or trouble. But their excuses would be amusing to listen to.

Cursing the loud music that kept him from hearing any sounds of movement or conversation, he slowly peeked around the side of the stairwell, looking down the hallway. What he saw made his blood boil.

The brunette from earlier had a blonde girl pinned up against the wall, face smashed against hers and hands somewhere out of sight, although Erik was willing to bet that he'd find them up the girl's shirt. Normally he'd simply frown on public displays of affection, but given how the girl was squirming, he'd be willing to bet that she wasn't feeling particularly impassioned.

 _Although_ , he mused as he slunk around the corner to break up the pair. _Rage_ _ **is**_ _passionate_. As he drew closer, sticking to the shadows so that neither would see him coming, the dim lighting in the hallway served only to illuminate the fire in the girl's eyes as she struggled to free herself from the bumbling embrace of the drunken idiot.

Letting a smirk play across his face, Erik reached out and grasped the drunkard's collar, hauling him across the narrow hallway and into the wall. Ignoring the girl for a moment, outside of a hissed _stay put_ , he pinned the boy against the wall much as the fool had pinned the girl moments before.

The boy babbled a string of excuses, whining about not knowing…something. It was difficult to discern between the fearful stutters and the drunken slurring. Staying silent for a moment, he let the idiot recognize that Erik was several inches taller, more muscular despite his leaner frame, and a whole lot more dangerous. Once the appropriate level of fear had been reached and the excuses silenced, Erik whispered: "Now, I'm going to overlook this for the moment in favor of teaching you a few things. First of all, the second floor's off limits. Transgression number one. Second, that's a lady you were attacking. She deserves just as much respect as you do. Treat her with it, and she might let you into her bed. If she says no, then you better respect that. There's your second transgression."

"And third…" Erik hissed, close to the boy's ear, feeling how the brunette was shaking and reveling in it. "You're _drunk_. I know for a fact that they keep the freshmen out of the alcohol here, since Laxus doesn't fancy getting a call from the cops. So here's how this is going to work. I'm going to let you go. You're going to apologize to the lady you were attacking, and then you're going to march yourself back downstairs, out the door, and back to your dorm. I'll be telling Laxus about this, and I doubt you'll be issued a repeat invitation. Are we clear?"

"C-crystal," the boy stammered, and Erik backed off, thrilled to know that he could still intimidate someone. If he hadn't been worried about what Laxus would say, he might have tried seeing if he could make the boy wet himself, but that would have meant extensive cleanup.

As the boy fled back down the stairs, he turned his attention to the girl, preparing for tears, shaking, and a variety of terrified reactions. Or worse, _hugging_. He hated being touched by anyone he didn't know.

What he didn't expect was the slim knife blade pointed directly at his jugular, unwavering.

"Calm down," he said slowly, raising his hands at his sides to show that he wasn't going to making any threatening movements towards her. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just wanted to make sure you were alright."

The knife stayed put. "Why did you follow him?" the girl demanded, back still pressed against the wall. "I had it under control."

"I don't doubt it," Erik said calmly, standing stock still. "But the second floor is off limits, so I came to shoo him out. That's all."

Slowly, the knife came down, and with it, the calm exterior. Sliding down the wall, the blonde collapsed into a sitting position, her knees up to her chest, the knife thudding dully as it slid out of her hand onto the floor.

 _Shit. Shit shit shit._ Erik thought, sinking into a crouch to bring him on the same level as the girl. He _did not_ do comfort. Not even Sorano, the only girl he spent time with on any type of regular basis could inspire any sort of comforting from him. Murderous protective rage, yes, but not comforting.

"What do you need?" he asked gruffly, feeling out of his depth. _Maybe if I go get Evergreen, she'll know what to do…?_

"I just…" she whispered, just loudly enough to be heard. "I froze for a moment. He caught me by surprise…I didn't think he'd follow me up here."

"So he got too close, and you didn't have time to draw your knife," Erik summarized, floundering for something to say. It _sounded_ a little like something Sorano had said after someone got the drop on her back when they owned the streets, and he and Macbeth had to go in and pull her out. For the next two days, she had raged about being caught off guard, and subsequently was _always_ on guard. Even Macbeth, who she had dated shortly before they realized they were better off as friends, wasn't able to sneak up on her without finding himself in danger of losing limbs. However, Sorano had nearly wiped out three entire rooms in their shared apartment, wrecking the already dilapidated furniture beyond repair in her rage. Not folded up against the wall.

"He got too close to kick down the hallway," the blonde sniffled. "I took Taekwondo for _years_. It's _embarrassing_. You shouldn't have had to save me."

"Shit happens," he replied with a shrug. "Anyway, if you're okay, let's get you back downstairs, and I'll introduce you to Laxus. He'll keep an eye on you so that doesn't happen again."

"I don't need a babysitter," the blonde protested sharply, the fire returning to her eyes. "I can take care of myself."

Picking up her knife and putting the blade away, Erik passed it back to her. "I don't doubt it. Not many girls would think to bring a knife to a party. What did you think you'd do, if you had been able to reach it?"

"Stab him somewhere where it hurts, and then get the hell out of dodge," the girl snarked as she tucked the knife back into the top of her boot. "I don't bring a knife to a fight so that I can _win_. It's here so that I can _run_."

He chuckled. _Now that's an interesting perspective_. Standing, he extended his arm to help her off the ground. She looked at it for a moment, and then grasped his forearm, allowing him to pull her upright.

For the first time, it seemed, they noticed the state of her shirt. A jagged rip down the middle split it in two, enough for Erik to see hints of black lace peeking out from the edges before the blonde pulled the two halves of her shirt together.

" _Damn him_ ," the blonde hissed angrily, sounding as if she would be capable of serving up the man who had assaulted her. "That was my favorite shirt!"

Erik winced. "That _might_ have been my fault," he said warily, keeping his eyes on her boot where the knife was tucked. "Since I did rip him away from you." Not that he regretted it, but life with Sorano had taught him that woman were _very_ protective about who saw them naked. She had given up chivvying them about wearing clothes around her, since puberty had led to a number of awkward situations, but she maintained that none of them were allowed to see her in the nude unless she was sleeping with them.

"Well, how am I supposed to go back out there with my shirt like this?" the blonde complained, and Erik inexplicably found himself pulling off his jacket and tugging off his tee shirt, passing it to her without a word.

"I can't take your _shirt_." She sounded scandalized. "What are _you_ going to wear?"

"My coat," he said with a sigh. "Look, I can't give you my coat, because it's going to be the same problems as your shirt, but my shirt will cover you. Just put it on."

"But your coat won't cover _you_ either!"

He rolled his eyes. It was only a few inches of skin. "It's socially acceptable for a man to show off his torso. I'll be fine. I wasn't planning on staying long anyway, since I only came to say hello to Laxus."

"So you know him?" A rustle of fabric, and Erik decided it was safe to take his eyes off her feet. "I saw him once when he and the others were making the tour of the dorms to invite everyone. He looked a bit…intimidating."

"We took calculus together freshman year and plotted to murder the TA." The man had been practically in love with math, and did his best to shove it down everyone's throats. Laxus, only taking the class because he was a physics major, and Erik, taking the class because he was a biology and chemistry double major, had come up with some pretty inventive ways of murdering the guy and burying his body.

The blonde, now wearing his shirt over the ruins of her previous shirt, grinned. "Did the guy survive?"

Erik raised an eyebrow. _So she looks sweet, but has a vicious streak?_ "By the mercy of Laxus not wanting to get in trouble with the law, and me wanting to continue to stay out of prison."

She snickered. "Nice. I'm Lucy Heartfilia by the way. Freshman, probably going to be an English major, but it could be History." The blonde, _Lucy_ , held her hand out to be shaken.

"Erik Drake, first year doctoral student studying toxicology." She had a firm grip, and met his eyes confidently as they shook hands. He couldn't help but be impressed by the blonde, who seemed to recover quickly from her shock. _She also looks good in my shirt…stop Erik, she's a freshman._

"Shall we go back downstairs?" he asked, wanting to rejoin other people so he didn't have to be reminded that a very attractive woman was currently wearing his shirt, let alone that he had caught a glimpse of what lay _under_ that shirt. Sorano would kill him for thinking about that, and he was willing to bet that Lucy wouldn't be far behind.

"Why not?" the girl said, tightening her ponytail. "Lay on Macduff."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Do you really find going back downstairs to a party to be comparable to entering a fight?"

"A toxicology doctoral student who knows Shakespeare and rescues damsels in distress? Count me impressed Mr. Drake." She laughed for a moment before sobering. "And to be honest, the party was growing tiresome before Dan cornered me. There's only so much loud music and dancing one can stand."

"Let me introduce you to Laxus," Erik said, motioning towards the stairs. "I have to let him know about your drunken suitor, anyway. And besides, I think you'll like him and his housemates. It's only really this bad at the beginning of the year, when they're trying to get to know the new freshmen."

"Good to know," Lucy muttered, taking a deep breath and walking past him. "Any tips for getting around the bookshelf?"

"Over the banister. How did you get past it to get up here?"

"They didn't put it tightly against the bottom against the wall. I was able to squeeze through."

At the foot of the stairs, he slid past her and dropped down over the banister, not caring about the three people he shouldered aside in the process. Shuffling backwards, he extended his hand to Lucy, who pulled herself over with little problem. Turning, he set off towards the kitchen, like he had been before movement at the stairs had caught his attention.

He kept looking back every so often, to make sure Lucy was sticking with him, and he eventually sighed, dropped back to throw a few elbows and clear out some interested suitors. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he propelled them through the crowd until they reached the kitchen, and he shimmied his way behind the long table with the punch bowl to where Laxus and Freed were lounging.

"Erik!" Freed said, genuinely pleased to see him. Erik hadn't really figured out what the green-haired man saw in him, other than as a fellow friend for Laxus, but he appreciated being made welcome. "Laxus, Erik came."

The blonde looked up from the tiny little freshman he was intimidating. "Oh, hey. I thought you weren't coming after all." His eyes narrowed, and he shooed the freshman away from the table with a glare. "Who's your friend?"

"Lucy Heartfilia," the blonde said firmly, stepping out of Erik's hold, and he tried to pretend that he didn't miss the contact. "Freshman. I bumped into Erik and he wanted to introduce us."

"I see," Laxus said, but before he could ask any more questions Evergreen pushed her way through the crowd and squealed at the sight of Lucy.

Freed facilitated introductions between the only female occupant of Raijinshu house and Lucy, giving Laxus the chance to corner Erik by the refrigerator.

"So, you're dating freshmen now?" Laxus asked, looking over his shoulder at the blonde chatting with Freed and Evergreen.

"She got upstairs," Erik said quietly. "She was hiding from a drunken freshman. Dan something. I found him with his hands up her shirt."

"Do you have a last name?" Laxus asked, immediately on guard.

"Brunette, slightly shorter than Freed, stocky. If Bix is working door duty, he could probably identify the kid who ran out in terror."

Laxus snorted. "So you terrified him. But why is she wearing your shirt?"

"The idiot ripped it when I separated them. So I gave her the shirt to wear. You'll look out for her?" Lucy seemed nice, and he didn't want anything to happen to her. Plus she seemed to be getting along with Freed and Evergreen, who he had never seen take to another girl that quickly.

"Not a problem," Laxus said. "If the besotted look on Freed's face is anything to go by, we'll be seeing a lot of her. I'll keep an eye out for your drunkard, don't worry."

"She said she was studying English or History," Erik said, recalling their conversation in the upstairs hall. "Figures she and Freed would hit it off." Checking his watch, he figured he could get an hour or so of work in the lab done before his housemates would get back from training, based on the previous few nights. Good thing he had an extra shirt in the lab. "I'm going to head out."

"Thanks for coming," Laxus said as they rejoined the others. "You'll have to come over Sunday afternoon. Freed's reinstating mandatory Sunday dinners."

"You're leaving?" Lucy said, breaking off her conversation with Freed. "What about your shirt?"

"Keep it," Erik said with a shrug. "It's fine." It was one of his favorite shirts, but he had others.

"Let me see your phone," Lucy said, and he passed it to her obediently, having heard that tone from Sorano and knowing that resistance was futile. When he got it back, he found her name and number programmed into his contact directory. "I'll text you next week, and we can set up a time to meet so I can give it back after I've washed it."

Saying his goodbyes, Erik slipped out the kitchen door, rather than shove his way through the living room again. Distracting himself with thoughts of his experiments, he tried to ignore the way Lucy had looked wearing his shirt. She'd probably forget all about him, even if she did insist on returning his shirt.

So, four days later when he got a text asking him to meet up so she could return his shirt, he was surprised. And not really understanding what interested him about the blonde freshman, he suggested that they meet at the campus coffeehouse. When she offered to buy him coffee for helping her, he accepted.

Any excuse to get to know her better.

 *****Well, it's late, but here it is. The beginning of their friendship. Also, the conversation about what Lucy would do with her knife is taken out of a conversation I had with my boyfriend the other day.**

 **Time to go work on today's prompt!*****


	3. Online

**Online:**

 _Lucy Heartfilia is now friends with Erik Drake_

He didn't quite know how it happened. One minute he was just stopping by a party to say hello to his friends, and then he was helping a girl get away from a drunk suitor. And giving her his shirt.

That was probably where it started. Because like that story with the mouse and the cookie, one action generally leads to another.

In this case, giving up his shirt to Lucy Heartfilia led to her wanting to return it to him.

So he offered to meet her at the campus coffeehouse.

Which led to her offering to buy him coffee.

Erik figured he'd be polite, since she seemed like a reasonable human being, so he had coffee with her.

Of course, that led to them figuring out they both were intensely interested in anything written by Tolkien, after Erik made a joke that referenced _The Children of Hurin_ and Lucy almost spit coffee all over the pile of books in front of her.

Her fascinated response set them into a thorough discussion over Frodo's departure from Middle Earth that lasted three hours, and would have gone on longer if Erik hadn't had experiments to get back to and Lucy a class to attend. But the discussion moved into a text conversation that persisted for the next three days.

Five days after they stopped texting, Erik nearly slammed into Lucy as he raced towards his lab. His professor had just called him, something about undergrads getting into his lab on accident and potentially disturbing everything he had set up. Since he had spent the past week preparing for an experiment he had planned to run later that evening, he was absolutely panicked that he would have to wait another week.

The blonde squeaked as he shoved past her on his dead sprint towards the chemistry building, and the sound and brief glimpse of blonde hair had him slowing down long enough to apologize and briefly explain what was going on before he continued on his way. Erik figured that he wouldn't hear back from her after that, since he had been relatively rude and terse with her, but he was surprised by the text later that evening asking if his lab was in one piece.

Now it was his turn to ask her to coffee, as an apology for almost running her over and being rude about it.

This time their conversation branched out a bit to discuss other books they'd read. Erik was surprised to find that she shared similar tastes in novels, and even more surprised when she passed a battered book across the table, saying that she thought he'd like it, and it was one of her favorites. Tucking it into his bag, he forgot about it for the next two days until he was rummaging around for a spare pen and found it.

It took him a day, squeezing reading in around going to class, attending the visiting speaker seminar, and working to put his lab to rights after a bunch of undergraduates had mistaken it for the teaching laboratory it used to be. The TAs who had been supervising that particular section were probably still hiding under a rock somewhere a few continents away.

Erik texted Lucy when he had finished the book, offering to return the book to her. She proposed they meet for dinner in the campus dining hall so that they'd have enough time to fully discuss the book. Despite having eaten at the dining hall for all of his freshman year, and then swearing he'd never return, he agreed. Suffering through the bland, unappetizing food, he debated the merits of the novel with Lucy, finding her to be a spirited debate partner.

"It's too idealistic," he said firmly, squashing her enthusiastic description of the Abbey. "The prose is pretty, but the plot is too neat. Even though people die, it's pretty. Life isn't like that. Everyone moves on and accepts it because he's old and it's probably time for him to pass on, but we don't see any true pain. All in all, its Matthias's coming of age story."

"Try this one," Lucy said, pulling an even more battered book out of her bag. " _Redwall_ may be idealistic and a bit simplistic, but it's the first book. _Martin the Warrior_ might be more palatable."

So he took the book, willing to try one more book in this series, even though talking animals wasn't necessarily his cup of tea. To his surprise, he liked the plot better, empathizing more with Felldoh than the title character himself. It still had the idealism, but it felt more real.

He said as much to Lucy when they next met, conversing in his cramped office over takeout, since he refused to eat in the dining hall again. They traded books again, and by the end of the first term, he had read all twenty-two novels in the series.

By that point, they had ended up meeting weekly, holed up in the graduate student lounge in the chemistry building at night. Most of the other grad students were either in their labs or at home, so nobody made a fuss over Lucy's presence, and the blonde appreciated the quiet as she typed furiously at papers for her classes. From what she said, she was attempting to double major in both English and History, and he could tell the workload was enormous. The number of books she had in her bag was staggering, but she still was able to recall minute details as they discussed whichever volume of the series that he was reading at the time.

"You know," she said one night in December as she was taking a break from one of her papers to look at the softly falling snow. "Most people spend less time together and are friends on Facebook."

"I'm not most people," Erik grunted, working on studying for his Forensic Pathology exam. "Your point?"

"Friend me on Facebook," Lucy said cheerfully. "We'll be able to keep in touch as long as you're near your computer. It will keep your phone from vibrating so much during experiments because I don't know your lab schedule."

Sighing, because the one thing he had learned about Lucy in the three months of their acquaintance was that she was usually right, and she was particularly stubborn, he opened up his laptop and signed in to Facebook. He rarely used it, only to keep in touch with the rest of the Seis and a few others he had met during college, Laxus and the rest of Raijinshu House included, so he hadn't thought to add Lucy.

He typed her name into the search box, finding her easily. Her last name was distinctive enough, as was her smile. Sending the request was a matter of a few clicks, and then her laptop was chiming at her. Lucy's smile as she accepted the request was brilliant, and Erik couldn't help but smile back as he closed his laptop and returned to his textbook.

 _Lucy Heartfilia and Erik Drake are now in a relationship._

While their friendship had taken three months to foster before it gained "official" acknowledgement, their relationship took three years, two months and twelve days to become formalized.

By Lucy's junior year, they had come to spending most evenings together, either in Erik's office or their off campus housing. Prior years had found them at Raijinshu house, neutral territory for both of them after Lucy was practically adopted by the elder blonde, but since Laxus and the others had graduated with their Masters' degrees, the house had been let to new tenants. He could still remember the first time he had invited Lucy over to the house he shared with Macbeth.

She had gone straight for his bookcase, singling out the fiction intermixed with the heavy books on chemistry, biology, herpetology, and poisons. He had laughed, and they spent the rest of the evening nitpicking over his collection. Over the three years they had known each other, their casual conversations about books had expanded to the point where they practically had a standing agreement to go to each superhero movie's midnight premiere. Lucy always attempted to analyze the characters' motivations, making him laugh and suggest that she was better suited to psychology.

Erik had been more tentative when taking up her invitation to visit her at the apartment she shared with fellow History major Levy McGarden. He had very little experience with females, outside of his friendship with Lucy, and he considered Evergreen and Sorano exemptions to the normal spectrum for females. Those in the lab sections he supervised were hopeless, in his opinion. A completely different species.

But Lucy's shared apartment looked completely normal, with bookshelves everywhere, and piles on the floor. He had to learn to pick his way through them to get anywhere without tripping, but the girls rarely rearranged the locations of the piles, only the contents. He eventually got over his mistrust of the apartment simply because it was a space claimed by two females.

"Why don't you wash up in the bathroom?" Lucy asked him one night as he was washing his hands in the kitchen sink. "You can use the hand soap that won't dry out your hands instead of the dish soap."

He felt like a deer in headlights under her gentle gaze. "B-but that's a _girls'_ bathroom!" he said, embarrassed by the stutter that slipped out. "I can't go in _there_."

Lucy sat down on the floor, she was laughing so hard. When she recovered, she reached for his hand and tugged him out of the kitchen, through the living room, and through the hallway with the bedrooms until she reached the bathroom door. Throwing open the half closed door, she shoved him gently inside. "There you go Erik," she giggled. "Just a normal bathroom. I promise, you'll retain your manhood if you have to use it."

Later that night, he tried to explain it to Macbeth, who was as amused by the incident as Lucy had been.

"You of all people should know what I mean," Erik growled from his place in the armchair with a can of soda. "Sorano claimed the second bathroom and kept all of us out. She was _not_ someone I wanted to cross."

Macbeth just laughed.

The night they became a couple started like all of the other nights. Lucy had come over after they had gone out with Laxus and the rest of his former housemates, meeting them at a bar frequented by federal agents. Erik had heard of the place from Sorano and the others, now fully fledged DEA agents, but the DEA tended to go on Saturday nights, while ATF agents like Laxus and his housemates were in attendance on Fridays.

"Want to watch a movie?" she asked skimming through his collection. She had been the designated driver for the night, not that either of them really drank all that much, and had decided to stay after dropping him off.

"What about one of the Star Trek ones?" he suggested, moving into the kitchen to make tea. From all of their coffee dates, he had learned that while Lucy didn't mind coffee, she preferred tea, just as he did. _She_ , though, didn't have a habit of discussing the various plants in tea blends and their components.

"I blame you," the blonde called. "You've gotten me addicted to the show. Levy found me binge-watching _Deep Space Nine_ the other night."

"No worse than the way you got me addicted to the Harry Potter books," he retorted, carrying the teapot and mugs into the living room. "Macbeth laughed for _days_ about that."

"It was rather adorable," Lucy said with a giggle. "You pretty much locked yourself in the office until you got to the end of _Half Blood Prince_ …"

Erik growled self-consciously. "They were short reads, and since apparently everyone else on the planet has read them, I didn't want spoilers once people knew I was reading them."

"And then you went and terrified your students more than usual when you thought that Snape had betrayed them," Lucy continued, snickering behind her hand. "Who knew that you'd be such a fan of the 'greasy git'?"

"He's a marvelously complex character, who is rather _real_ compared to some of the others," Erik defended. "Severus Snape shows us the worst and the best of human character. He's not one-sided either, completely good or completely evil. Snape's in it for his own goals, and continuously gets screwed over by Voldemort or Dumbledore both."

Lucy cackled as she dropped herself on the couch next to him, within easy reach of the teapot and mugs. He had gotten used to how she tended to sprawl or snuggle when watching movies, since she either wanted to put her feet in someone's lap or lean up against them. She had turned Laxus into the biggest cuddler he knew, although she and Macbeth were absolutely adorable when they fell asleep on the couch together. Erik had snuck several pictures of them and saved them for blackmail purposes.

She started the movie and made herself comfortable, curling up against Erik. _So tonight's a cuddle night, not a sprawl night_. Lucy had wormed her way into his personal bubble slowly, and now he was more uncomfortable because she was a desirable woman so close to him, instead of just being a person and close to him. Over their three year friendship, he had always been aware that Lucy was a knockout. He had warded off several enthusiastic suitors at her request by playing either the jealous lover or the overprotective brother. But she had never given him any sort of sign that she was interested in _him_ , even though he had come to realize that if he were to date, he'd want to date Lucy, or someone like her. Having her so close…it was a bit like torture.

As the movie credits rolled, he looked down at Lucy, wondering if everything was okay. She had been particularly snuggly all through the movie, draping his arm around her, tucking herself into his side, practically sitting on his lap. It was unusual for her to say the least.

Catching his shift she looked up at him, an odd expression on her face, like a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Before he could ask what was going on, she closed the distance between them, pressing her lips against his own.

His mind went blank at the sensation. _Lucy was kissing him_. She began to pull back, sliding out of his lap, opening her mouth to make excuses, and he realized that she thought his lack of response was a lack of interest. Pulling her back onto his lap, he kissed her gently, trying to convey that he wanted to be with her, wanted to have her as his girlfriend.

By the time he was finished, she had relaxed, responding to the kiss and twining her arms around his neck, hands in his hair. The sensations made him shudder, bringing them into further contact. Regretfully he withdrew, needing space before he pushed things any farther.

Lucy looked up at him, a small smile on her lips. "So, I guess this makes us a couple then?" she whispered, bringing her hand out of his hair to gently trace his jawline.

 _Stop it Lucy, you don't know how_ _ **good**_ _that feels. I'm trying to be a gentleman…_ "I guess so," he murmured back, catching her hand in his own. "But take pity on me and take it slow. I've never…" he chickened out, now knowing how to put it. He'd kissed a girl before, once, his freshman year, just to see what it was like. But he had never been in a relationship before, never wanted to be in a relationship until he met Lucy. She had dated a guy during her freshman year, and he thought he remembered a short romance at the beginning of her sophomore year, so he knew that she was more experienced in having a relationship than he was.

"It's okay," she said gently, squeezing his hand. "I understand. You set the pace, okay?"

He nodded, and she slid out of his lap and stood up. "I should be getting home, Levy will be wondering what's going on."

"Let me walk you to the door," he said, rising to join her.

At the door, he pulled her close for a hug, remembering the things he had seen other couples do. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, before heading down his porch steps to her car. Erik watched as she waved before getting in and driving away. As he cleared up the tea things, he listened for the familiar sound of his phone vibrating, knowing that she would text him once she was back in her apartment safely. When it chimed not long after vibrating he was surprised, but upon checking it, he had to smile at the Facebook notification waiting for him.

 _Lucy Drake married Erik Drake_

"She _what_!" Mirajane Strauss yelled, deafening most of the occupants of _Fairy Tail_. Checking their own phones as notifications popped up, the three members of the Oracion Seis that were seated in the corner booth paled.

Erik, and his new wife, were dead if they came anywhere near Mira before the woman had forgiven them for eloping.

 *****So, Beta and I came up with that together. Not much to say, although I'm sort of caught up for a few hours.**

 **If anyone is interested,** ** _The Children of Hurin_** **is a novel by Tolkien set well before** ** _The Hobbit_** **. I find it excellent, although others might disagree.** ** _Redwall_** **and** ** _Martin the Warrior_** **are two novels from the** ** _Redwall_** **series by Brian Jacques. I highly recommend the series; it was my absolute favorite as a child, and it remains awesome.** ** _Harry Potter_** **, is of course, written by Rowling.*****


	4. Color

**Color:**

"What do you think about this color?" Lucy waved a paint chip in front of her husband's face, trying to attract his attention. Currently, the maroon haired man was intensely focused on his cellphone.

"Erik?" No response. She tried again. "Dr. Drake?"

"No you absolute _imbecile_ ," her husband growled as his head snapped up, and Lucy giggled. The one way to get her husband to respond was to sound like an undergraduate attempting to ask him an inane question. "That reagent doesn't…oh, sorry love."

"It's alright," Lucy said, secretly curious about what could have distracted him so much that he needed to be jogged out of his own head. "What do you think about this color?"

"Not copper," he muttered, glancing briefly at the chip in her hand. "More woad than copper, if we're going for blue."

"Well, blue can be for either a boy or a girl, right?" Lucy pointed out. "Besides, a nice pastel blue would look nice in the nursery, wouldn't it?"

"Stick with the woad shades then." As Lucy's hand hovered over the rows of paint chips, her husband briefly looked up from his phone to order: "Not cyan. _Woad_ woman."

"Why don't you just _show_ me, since you're the one with the degree in chemistry and knows all of these colors?" Lucy snapped, rubbing her forehead. She knew that choosing paint colors could be exasperating, but they had been here for five minutes and she was already starting to get frustrated. Taking a deep breath, she ran a hand over the barely there bump. She was three months along, and Erik had insisted that they get the nursery ready early, so that way she wouldn't be stressed later. They hadn't even told Laxus or Macbeth yet.

Looking up again, Erik pulled a chip out of the rack. "Like this. This is decently close to woad."

 _Aviary Blue_. Lucy examined the chip in her hand, trying to picture the color in the room they had chosen as a nursery. It would work, but then again, she wasn't sure that she wanted to paint the room blue and have everyone assume that they had known the gender and chosen the color because of that, or that if they had a girl, they had been wrongly informed… "Maybe a yellow?"

Her husband didn't respond again, and Lucy sighed, browsing the rack of paint chips. _That's too sunny, that's just…ew. Jonquil doesn't look too bad…_

Erik must have looked up as she reached for the paint chip to examine it more closely, because he knocked her hand aside. "No. No, no, no, no, _no_. No arsenic."

Shaking her head, Lucy moved on to the green section. It was the other gender neutral color on the rack. Most of the shades were too dark, or too ugly, for her to really consider, but that one… "Erik, what do you think of this one? _Picnic_?"

She had to pinch the skin just under his elbow to get him to look up, but when he did, she got a distracted nod and a "Chlorophyll's good."

Then he did a double take, looking at the brand of paint advertised in front of them. "Good, you're looking at the right brand."

He put away his phone, and Lucy sighed in relief. "Do you think painting the entire room this color would be too much?"

"Maybe this one," Erik said, pulling out another chip. " _Nurture Green_. Sounds like a good color for a nursery."

Biting her lip, Lucy looked at the colors again. "I still think that it might be a little overpowering to do the whole room in green though."

"What if we did one of those…accent walls? Like they're always doing on those shows you watch?"

"Oh, on HGTV?" Lucy pursed her lips in thought. "I could see us doing that. The wall where we're putting the crib maybe?"

She tried matching the green in Erik's hand to the neutral colors, but she couldn't find one that just… _fit._ Staring at the color in front of her, she found herself slowly growing accustomed to it. _It wouldn't be too much on the walls, I think. And we could always paint over it. As long as we choose different colored accents…._

"You want to paint the entire room this color?" Erik said, wrapping his arm around her. "It's not a bad color. I think it would look nice in there. We could get a tan area rug or something for the floor, and maybe a chocolate colored crib…"

"Dark wood rocker with blue cushions," Lucy said firmly, seeing the room come together in her mind. "This is the color I want. We can keep the white trim."

"Have you made your selection?" A young employee was hovering behind them. Lucy was vaguely aware that the young man had been there earlier, when Erik was describing everything in terms of the source of the color, but she had ignored him in favor of trying to decipher what her husband was telling her. "Can I mix the paint for you?"

"This one," Erik said, handing him the chip. " _Nurture Green_. In Harmony. Flat."

"I'm afraid we don't have Harmony at this store," the clerk said. "We have Infinity, Ovation…"

"Harmony," Erik said flatly. "I don't want volatile organic compounds in my nursery."

"Oh, this is for a nursery?" the clerk chirped, beaming at Lucy. "Congratulations ma'am! Boy or girl?"

"Too early to tell," Lucy said easily, resting her hand on Erik's arm as he growled lowly at the boy. "We probably will let ourselves be surprised."

"Can you order Harmony?" Erik said, interrupting whatever the boy was about to say.

"No sir, I don't believe any of our stores carry that particular type…"

Lucy sighed as Erik began squabbling with the poor employee over their lack of non-toxic paint options. If this was how he reacted to every potential environmental threat, she'd be beyond irritated by the time she was ready to give birth.

"Erik, let's just order online from the retailer, pick up some brushes and rollers, and while you're at work, I can paint by myself."

He whirled on her, panic in his eyes. "No. No painting for you. I'll get Midnight to help me if I really need it. Actually, why don't you go stay with your brother for a few days while I paint the room?"

Now her hackles were really up. "Erik Drake, you will not shut me out of preparing the nursery! I have just as much right as you to…"

Their argument was disrupted an hour later as the manager approached them, the nervous employed skulking at his footsteps. "Ma'am, sir? I'm going to have to ask you to take your domestic dispute elsewhere."

"And why is that?" Erik snarled, turning on the woman, who held her ground. An admirable trait, considering Lucy had seen hardened DEA and ATF agents run terrified from Erik when he looked like that. Even Mest, their ex-CIA friend, cowered in fear when Erik turned on him. He had been fairly menacing when he had both of his eyes, but now that he only had one, and a scar that stood out against his coffee colored skin where the other used to be, he was downright frightening.

"Because the store is closed now," the woman said firmly. "We need you to leave so we could close up shop."

Muttering about incompetent stores that couldn't keep non-toxic paint options in stock, Erik allowed Lucy to lead him out by the elbow, the blonde shooting an apologetic glance at the manager and the employee. It would be a while before they would be able to return to that particular store without getting odd looks, she predicted.

In their car, on the way back to the house that they had moved into before Erik's accident, her husband sighed. "I'm sorry that I just went off on you like that," he said softly, reaching his hand over to rest on her knee. "I'm just…I'm worried about you. After…after the accident, I was terrified of losing you. And now that you're pregnant…"

Lucy smiled softly, rolling up her sleeve to show her tattoo. "I promised you eternity Erik," she said, pushing away the fear that festered within her whenever she thought of how close she came to losing him in the accident and its aftermath. "Don't think you're getting rid of me that easily."

They drove in silence for a few minutes, before Erik said: "I'd rather you not do any of the painting, but as long as you promise to stay out of the room until it's painted and aired out, you don't have to leave the house."

"I can live with that," Lucy said, squeezing his hand. "I'll just spend my time on the computer looking for baby furnishings."

"We've got to tell the others soon," Erik reminded her. "Now that we're past three months."

"Macbeth suspects I think," Lucy mused. "He was watching me the other night when I ordered at _Fairy Tail_. We haven't gone out as often since the accident, so Mira hasn't picked up on it. Kinana probably knows, since I try to order from her instead of Mira, because I like having the chance to chat with her."

"You should have her over sometime soon," Erik said slowly. "She'd love to spend more time with you, and I'm sure towards the end, you'll be happy for some female company."

Snorting, Lucy replied: "And Sorano's not one for nurturing?"

Erik laughed. "About as much as Erza."

Both of them laughed at that.

 *****Well, late again. But Beta and I spent some time yesterday afternoon figuring out what this prompt would actually be about. And then I had to spend a lot of time searching the internet with phrases like "toxic qualities of paint" and "colors for nursery". Plus actually figuring out that there's a less toxic type of paint, specifically Sherwin Williams' Harmony, and my local Lowes doesn't carry it. Hence the argument with the store clerk. The paint colors mentioned are real paint colors, so feel free to look them up!**

 **Now, time to sit down and write the angst that is going to be** ** _Answers_** **. And then by extension** ** _Energy_** **. Spoiler alert: they involve the accident that Erik and Lucy mention. Also, this is set approximately three years into their marriage.*****


	5. Answers

**Answers:**

When her phone rang, Lucy was elbow deep in soapsuds.

She remembered cursing. Remembered being irritated that whoever it was couldn't have waited five minutes for her to be done washing the dishes. She had just finished making pie, Erik's favorite, for their anniversary. It was a few days early, but they had planned to spend the entire weekend celebrating. Two years wasn't a milestone anniversary, but Lucy wanted to celebrate each year that they had each other.

Lucy let the phone go to the answering machine. The caller didn't leave a message.

 _It was probably a telemarketer_ , she remembered thinking. Nothing to bother with.

Later, she found out that her cellphone had rung. It was still on silent, since she had been working before she took a break to wash the dishes. When she finished, she didn't pick it up to check her messages. She just went back to work.

Footsteps on the floor of her office finally roused her from her concentration. She was just getting to the pivotal scene, the one that she had been building up to since the very beginning. Irritated, she looked up, expecting to find Erik, home from work early.

Instead she found Macbeth, looking paler than usual, and grim.

"W-what is it?" she remembers stuttering, hand tightening on her mouse as she paused the music that had been playing in the background. "Aren't you supposed to be at work?" For Macbeth to be here during working hours, which she confirmed with a quick glance at her computer screen…something was wrong. Her mind leapt to the former Seis, their jobs as DEA field agents, but it was a passing thought. Macbeth wouldn't be here for her if one of them was injured. He would have gone for Erik, if he had left the hospital at all. Not for her, even though she technically was one of the Seis. Erik would have come for her, or sent Kinana.

Her mind leapt to Laxus next. Sometimes, she thought desperately, the DEA and ATF did join operations. Laxus could have been injured, and nobody would have told her because even though they're as good as siblings, ATF wants contacts to have blood relations. Or marital. Hell, it could have been Mest, or Natsu, or Grey, or any of her college classmates, those weird attachments she made with her floormates who ended up practically getting adopted by the members of Raijinshu house, friendships that lasted beyond any other bond they could have formed. Oddly enough, none of them had any relation to each other, or to anyone outside of their floor, but they made each other family. All of them.

"Lucy," Macbeth said, and Lucy suddenly realized that instead of the usual black eyeliner that rimming his eyes, it was a red puffiness that she associated with crying. "There was an incident on campus this afternoon. An accident in one of the chemistry labs."

She didn't remember standing. Or falling. But she found herself on the floor, Midnight hovering over her.

"You didn't answer your phone," he was saying, and numbly she thought of the call when she was washing dishes. "Either phone. They…they called me. I told them I would get you, and bring you to the hospital."

"What happened to him?" Lucy whispered, reaching for his hands as he moved to help her up. Once balanced on her shaky legs, she clung to the other man for support. "Is he okay? Why is he at the hospital?"

"I don't know," Macbeth said hoarsely. "They wouldn't tell me much, but said that I should get to the hospital, and bring you."

* * *

The ride to the hospital was a blur. And now Lucy was sitting in the waiting room with the remnants of the Seis around her. Macbeth had passed her off to Sawyer when he got to the hospital so he could park the car, but once he had returned, he hadn't moved from her side, allowing her to clench his hand in a death grip.

Nobody had any information on Erik's status. None of the doctors would talk with them, even though Lucy had begged for information as his wife. All they could do was sit in silence.

When the door opened, Lucy didn't look up. If it was a doctor, someone else would make enough noise to let her know. Slowly, Erik's friends and coworkers had been trickling in. Kinana sat on her other side, and even Jellal Fernandes, the Seis's DEA team leader and Erik's official contact had arrived.

Footsteps moved towards her, and she braced herself for the inevitable platitudes that the visitor would offer. The questions they would ask that she had no answer for.

Instead, she found herself wrapped in strong arms, almost pulled out of her seat and crushed against a familiar chest. Blinking, she recognized Laxus's ATF windbreaker, and wondered who had told him. Probably one of the others. Or he had heard at work.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered into her hair, holding her tight. "I'm so sorry Lucy."

She cried then. Before, she had sat dry eyed, but now, for some reason, the floodgates burst, and she was sobbing into Laxus's chest. He rocked her gently, rubbing her back gently, even as she gripped Macbeth's hand and the other man shifted to alleviate the strain on them.

Their embrace was broken by the door opening again, and Lucy let Laxus shift her back into her seat, Macbeth settling back into his, and Kinana taking her other hand. It was a doctor this time, with surgical scrubs marked with what had to be Erik's blood. She wanted to throw up.

"Mrs. Drake?" he asked to the room at large, and Lucy swallowed hard before standing.

"How is my husband?" she asked softly, feeling Macbeth and Kinana rise alongside her, supporting her, and Laxus's reassuring presence behind her. "Nobody's told us anything."

"He's alive," the doctor said firmly. "We had to do quite a bit of surgery to get all of the glass out of him, but he'll pull through."

Lucy felt a heady rush of relief, but the sober look on the doctor's face kept it from overtaking her. "There's more though, isn't there?"

The surgeon closed his eyes briefly. "The glass fragments from the explosion got into his eye. His right eye. He'll lose all sight in that eye, as far as we can tell. We don't know if he'll lose the other eye as well. Only time can tell."

"If the fragments were only in his right eye, why would he lose both?" Lucy squeezed Macbeth's hand in thanks. She could barely process the thought that Erik would lose one eye, let alone both. Speaking of it was out of the question.

"It's a condition known as symptomatic opthalmia. Sometimes, in cases with eye trauma, the body turns on the uninjured eye. We won't be able to know for certain whether that is the case for Dr. Drake."

There was more, but Lucy tuned it out. Someone in the room was listening and would tell her if she needed to know. Right now, all she wanted to do was go to her husband.

"Can I see him?" she asked, interrupting the surgeon. "Please, I need to see him."

"In about twenty minutes, Mrs. Drake," the surgeon said kindly. "He's in recovery right now, and then he'll be moved to an inpatient room. While he's in recovery, only you and one other can sit with him, but as soon as he's moved to a regular room, you'll be restricted to the number of people who can fit in the room, or the nurses' discretion. Someone will come for you when he's ready for visitors."

As he left, Lucy sunk back against Laxus, who helped guide her into the chair she had vacated previously. _Erik might be blind_. Her wonderful, snarky, witty, _brilliant_ Erik might be blind. It would be an end to his research. Technology might be able to accommodate him, but he wouldn't ever be able to work completely autonomously as he used to, and Erik hated working with other people.

For the next twenty minutes, the room was dead silent. When the nurse came to get her, Lucy squeezed Macbeth's hand as she stood, releasing Kinana's, and nodding her thanks to Laxus, who had stayed close. All of the Seis were close, but Erik and Macbeth were more than brothers. Closer than any type of bond she could think of, in a completely non-romantic way. If it were Laxus, even though the bond she shared with him was nothing compared to the one Macbeth shared with Erik, she would want to be there.

Together, the two of them followed the nurse down the hallway, surrounded by the sound and smell of the hospital. Lucy's heart jumped into her throat as they approached the recovery ward. As much as she wanted to see Erik, she was afraid. Afraid that the man in the bed wouldn't be her Erik anymore. Afraid that it was worse than the doctor's words had suggested.

Macbeth was trembling next to her as they were shown into the ward and pointed towards Erik's bed. Knowing that he was just as frightened and worried as she was kept Lucy moving forwards. Towards the brilliant shock of maroon hair that stood in stark contrast to the white sheets.

He was still out cold, with bandages wrapped around his head, covering his eyes from view. There were a few places where there were stitches, cuts too large to be bandaged. Macbeth pulled out a chair and guided her into it before taking his own seat.

She wanted to reach out and touch Erik. Reassure herself that he was still alive and breathing. That his skin was still the same, warm temperature that she remembered from when he kissed her goodbye that morning, grumbling about having to supervise freshmen general chemistry labs for most of the day. But the bandages on his arms, on his fingers…on all of the skin not covered by the hospital blankets…she wasn't sure if she'd be able to feel anything.

The two of them sat there in silence, listening to the beeping of the machines monitoring Erik's vitals. Nurses moved behind them, monitoring the patients, but Lucy's attention was fixed on her husband, lying completely still in the bed in front of her. Erik was never still. Even when sleeping, he shifted slightly, ready to rise at any time. It had startled her in the early days of their marriage, but she was used to it now.

When he started stirring, she wanted to cry again. This was the Erik she knew. Then the stirring became more like panicked thrashing, accompanied by small grunts and groans. Macbeth was out of his chair in an instant, summoning the nurses, but Lucy latched on to Erik's hand trying not to squeeze too hard in case she opened the wounds, avoiding the sensors and the tubes between them.

"Erik, it's okay. You're in the hospital. Calm down, the nurse will be here in a moment. You're recovering from surgery, so you need to take it easy."

"Lucy ? Can't…see…" he mumbled, and Lucy squeezed his hand lightly.

"Some glass got into your eyes Erik. They've bandaged them for now, but don't try to open them unless a doctor tells you to. Here comes Macbeth with the nurse now."

The nurse bustled through, shunting Lucy aside as she bent over Erik, murmuring softly and checking vitals. Macbeth steadied her, allowing her to use him as a support as she fretted. Eventually Erik stilled, resting in relative peace after the nurse presumably explained what had happened to him. As she left, the nurse motioned for Lucy and Macbeth to take their previous places at Erik's bedside.

"He'll be groggy and out of it, that's from the anesthesia, and the painkillers. Don't fret too much over that, but let me know if it's particularly bad." The nurse had a cheerful smile on her face, but Lucy wanted to make it go away. Her husband was lying in the hospital bed, potentially going blind, and this woman was _smiling_?

"Lu-cy?" Erik mumbled from the bed, and she dove for his hand, wrapping her fingers around it the same way she used to handle a fine china teacup when she still lived with her father.

"I'm here Erik," she said, biting back a sob. "I'm here, and Macbeth's here, and everyone else is in the waiting room. They said you could have more visitors once you're moved to a regular room, so I hope you're up for company."

"There was an explosion," Erik said, stumbling as he got through the three syllable word. "Everything hurt."

"Which lab Erik?" Macbeth asked cautiously. "Which lab were you in?"

"Mine," her husband said. "I was doing some of my tests."

"What were you working on?" Macbeth pressed. "Do you remember? Can you tell me?"

"Macbeth!" Lucy hissed, glaring at him. "Is now really the time to be asking that?" Did they really need to interrogate him right out of surgery? He should be recovering, not trying to answer questions. What if he had head trauma?

"Lucy, Erik works with _toxins_." Macbeth said patiently. "If he was working with them when he was injured, we need to know what he might have been exposed to."

She paled.

"Azide," Erik said slowly. "Heat-sensitive. Check…notebook…"

"Nurse?" Macbeth said calmly, but Lucy had known him long enough to trace the note of urgency underneath his tone. "Can I ask you a few questions about his bloodwork?"

"If I didn't know you better," Lucy tried to joke weakly, attempting to ignore the new danger that might be coursing through her husband's veins. "I'd say you were trying to get out of celebrating our anniversary. Was last year so bad?"

"Never," Erik mumbled, turning his head slightly in her direction. "Sorry love. Looks like your planning's going to go to waste."

"Hush now," Lucy said, as a tear slid down her face. "We'll make up for it another time. You just rest up and get better, understand?"

"If you say so boss," he mumbled, slipping into what appeared to be a light doze.

After a short while, Macbeth came back, slipping his cellphone back into his pocket as he entered the cubical where Erik's bed was.

"Good news," he said softly, glancing at Erik's sleeping form. "The EHS people on scene were able to recover Erik's notebook. It missed the wreckage because it was in a drawer. According to one of his colleagues, the only azide listed in the notebook is toxic, but from what they were able to figure, he hadn't quite gotten to creating the azide itself. And the nurses just ran a tox screen on his blood and they said he's clear. They're just waiting a little bit longer before transferring him upstairs."

Together they sat in silence next to Erik's bed until the nurses began prepping him for transport, and they were shooed out into the hall to wait for him. Following the hospital bed upstairs, Macbeth pulled out his phone again, likely to tell the others where they were going, but it turned out to be unnecessary because everyone was waiting for them in the ward's waiting room as they walked by.

Macbeth broke off to speak with everyone, but Lucy stayed right behind the nurses as they guided Erik's bed into the hospital room. He was placed away from the window, but the other bed was empty, so they had plenty of space to move about in, and nobody to disturb. Distractedly, Lucy felt it was a good thing. Their group of friends meant well, but they were loud, rambunctious, and slightly unhinged.

Once he was settled, Erik seemed to stir slightly.

"Are you okay to say hi to some people?" Lucy asked softly. "You've got quite the crowd in the waiting room."

"Send 'em in," he groaned. "Sora's prolly…waiting to yell."

"I won't let her," Lucy promised, before going to the door to motion the first group inside.

The Seis rushed past her, and Lucy smiled minutely as she heard Sorano muttering angrily under her breath about stupid idiots. But Macbeth pulled her aside, and out of the room, and Lucy felt her smile disappearing, knowing that there was something else.

"There isn't a good way to say this," he began, tugging at the small braid at the side of his face, the way he only did when he was particularly agitated, "but I got a call from the agencies. Both DEA and ATF. They need you right now."

"Why?" Lucy asked, befuddled by why _she_ was being called in. She wrote press briefings for the agencies, part time. Surely they didn't need her while her husband was lying in the hospital, maybe blind.

Macbeth sighed. "They had a team sweep the lab, just in case, because Erik does consulting work for us. What they found suggests that there may have been two explosions. One because of the azide, but another because of an explosive device. It's enough to bring in both ATF and the DEA, since Erik works for us, and the bomb falls under ATF. Mest's keeping the FBI and NSA out of it for now, since we're hoping to keep this all in the family."

"Is he still in danger?" Lucy whispered, hand flying to cover her mouth.

"We don't know," Macbeth admitted. "But we need to issue a press statement. They're already circling like vultures. The intern from ATF is going to go to your house and get your laptop and something to wear. You need to write a statement and feed it to the press before the five o'clock news. ATF and DEA people will be there to answer technical questions, but you'll be in charge of the press conference."

"Why me?" Lucy asked, feeling a spark of anger rising in her. "What about the others? I'm part time, and all I do is _write_. I don't do press."

"Lisanna's on vacation, Levy is home sick with food poisoning, and they fired Jenny yesterday. You are the only person who isn't an intern that either department has. _There is no one else_."

* * *

Lucy straightened her blazer and made sure that her blouse was tucked into her skirt. ATF's intern had picked her best suit set, and even made sure to pack her hair and makeup supplies. The nurses had been kind enough to let her use their bathroom to dress. She had spent two and a half hours preparing her statement, and getting it proofread by the appropriate overseers at both ATF and DEA. All the while, she sat next to Erik's bed, listening to the steady beep of the machines as he dozed. Their family and friends drifted in and out, but Macbeth and Laxus, as well as Kinana, were constants. At least one of them was by her side at all times.

But they couldn't follow her here. The DEA and ATF had set up a press area, complete with podium, for her to use to address the reporters. She had to go out there alone, and pretend that she wasn't the wife of the man who had been injured in the explosion. Normally she wouldn't be let anywhere near the press in an official capacity, but she was the only one able to do it.

So she put on her mask, the blank, indifferent face that she had worn when her father was pushing her to be his ideal daughter, knowing that if she showed a single shred of weakness in front of the reporters, it was all over. They were sharks, and she was the juiciest tidbit that they might get all year.

Leaving the nurses' bathroom, she headed down the hall to the waiting area. Macbeth stood to greet her, a portfolio in his hands.

"The people they sent over brought your final copy," he said offering her the portfolio. "Everyone's ready to go when you are."

"Who's with Erik?" Lucy asked, not wanting to leave him alone, but knowing that she had no other option.

"Kina is," Macbeth said. "And Laxus is hovering outside the door. The rest of us are going to stay here, to minimize the number of people who might get ambushed by the press. I'll be going with you."

"Who's there from DEA and ATF?" Lucy asked, pushing the memory of Erik lying in the recovery room, still unconscious from anesthesia, out of her mind.

"Jellal's there for DEA, as his handler. Fullbuster from ATF, since Laxus is considered too close. They're both good at keeping cool under pressure, so you don't need to worry about them. Both have done press conferences before, and know what they should and shouldn't answer."

Together they walked down to the briefing area, Lucy running over the words of her statement in her head, knowing that she had to pull this off flawlessly or else risk botching the public relations side of this entire enterprise.

Macbeth left her at the door to the press room, where Jellal and Grey were waiting for her. Both men nodded politely at her, and followed her into the room.

Immediately there were camera flashes and bright lights. Blinking, Lucy made her way to the podium and set her portfolio atop it, opening it to show her statement.

Looking out over the crowd, Lucy took a deep breath, feeling Jellal and Grey take up flanking positions behind her. Raising her hand, she waited for silence.

Once she had it, she began.

"I will read a short statement, and then open the floor for questions. Today, Tuesday, April 24th, at 11:55 PM, there was an explosion in one of the private research laboratories at Magnolia University. At the time of the explosion, there was only one person in the lab, chemistry professor Dr. Erik Drake. Dr. Drake was injured in the explosion and transported immediately to Magnolia Hospital, where he immediately underwent emergency surgery to remove glass fragments embedded during the explosion. At this time, Dr. Drake is resting comfortably and his prognosis is good. Preliminary investigations into the cause of the incident suggest that an explosive device was detonated in the lab, causing a chemical explosion due to the nature of Dr. Drake's research. Because of this, and Dr. Drake's position as a consultant with the DEA, ATF and the DEA will convene a joint investigation into the cause of the explosion. ATF Agent Grey Fullbuster and DEA Agent Jellal Fernandes are here for any technical questions you may have. This concludes my statement, and I will now take questions."

Immediately, a clamor arose, and Lucy motioned for the first reporter, a brunette woman, to ask.

"Where are the ATF and DEA press corps? Why isn't Jenny Realight, Lisanna Strauss, or Levy McGarden doing this briefing? And who are you?"

Swallowing hard, Lucy said: "Ms. Realight has recently moved on to better opportunities, and all of us at ATF wish her well. Ms. Strauss is out of town, and Ms. McGarden is currently ill. Mt name is Lucy Drake, and I am a part time employee with both ATF and the DEA as part of their media relations team."

"Drake, as in Dr. Erik Drake, the injured professor?" someone yelled, and Lucy sighed, knowing that she wasn't going to get away without answering that question.

"Dr. Drake is my husband. Next question."

"What are Dr. Drake's injuries?"

"He received multiple wounds from glass shards. Some of those shards also entered his eye, and we are waiting on time to tell us exactly what the damage is."

There were a few questions about the preliminary findings from the site that Lucy handled, or passed off to Grey or Jellal, but as she was about to wrap the briefing up, she got the question she had been dreading.

"Mrs. Drake, why are you here and not with your husband?"

Behind her, she heard Grey and Jellal moving to cut her off, but she motioned for them to stay back.

"My husband was injured in the explosion today and is currently receiving medical treatment. I was here as soon as I was contacted, and remained by his side for most of the afternoon, until I was called away to _do my job_." Lucy paused for a moment, hoping that her words hadn't been too pointed. "Dr. Drake and I have always taken pride in our work, and both of us understand that sometimes extenuating circumstances call for measures that would not be considered otherwise. This is an example of extenuating circumstances. While it is not ideal, the situation as it stands required me to give this press briefing. Rest assured that I plan on staying with my husband for the foreseeable future, unless extenuating circumstances call me away."

"Isn't that rather cold?" someone muttered, and something inside Lucy snapped.

"My decision to be here conducting this briefing is for my husband's best interests. Someone put a bomb in his laboratory according to preliminary investigations. If my being here to give this statement and answer your questions helps us find answers to who set the bomb and why, I'll stand here all night. You, _unfortunately_ ," Lucy drawled coolly. "Don't have that amount of time. I'm sure all of your editors and producers want you back in time for the evening news, so I'll close this press conference now. Goodnight everyone."

Closing her portfolio, she swept out of the room, Jellal and Grey trailing behind her. With the door firmly shut, she dropped the façade, kicking off her shoe and kicking it into the side of a nearby trashcan.

"That bad?" Macbeth asked wryly.

"Cows," Lucy muttered retrieving her shoe. "And what was it with the unbuttoned shirt Grey?"

The dark haired man smirked. "Well, I was hoping that they'd all be distracted by my dazzling chest and ask you fewer questions, but it seems like that failed."

All of them snickered briefly before Lucy turned and headed for the elevators. "Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but I have been away from my husband's side for too long doing the stupid press conference that is _well_ above my pay grade. So if you excuse me, I'll leave you three to the vultures that will invariably come around looking for me, and return to Erik."

Alone in the elevator, Lucy rested her head against the cool metal sides. _Answers_ , she reminded herself when she wondered why she went through with the whole charade. _We'll get answers, and then we'll get justice_.

 *****So. Angsty enough for everyone?**

 **Okay, that took a long time, consultation with Beta, and far to many internet tabs open on questionable things. About the only thing you can quote me for certain on is that Azides are** ** _bad_** **. Otherwise...my medical knowledge is zip. All of my education has been in engineering, not medicine. So you can thank google and a few visits to the hospital to see family members for anything you may find here related to medicine. Oh, and the press conference stuff was all based off TV shows. Potentially a bit formal for something like this, but I was trying to get something on the page for everyone.**

 **So, for a little bit, I'm all caught up, but I still have tomorrow left to write. Expect a** ** _Frontlines_** **chapter at some point as well.*****


	6. Raspberry

**Raspberry:**

The house smelled like a bakery when Erik came home.

Previously, it had smelled like Christmas. The pine from the tree that Lucy had dragged him out to select, the cinnamon from the pinecones nestled in their bowl underneath the front window, and the scented candles that Lucy loved to light when darkness fell.

Now though, it smelled like baking, and Erik wouldn't usually complain, but he had ended up putting out proverbial fires in all of the undergraduate labs he had supervised that day, forcing him to skip lunch and power through on a combination of tea and a few energy bars of questionable age that he vaguely remembered stashing in his desk drawer sometime during his PhD studies. He was ravenous, and Lucy would murder him if he devoured all of her baking in one go. If she didn't, he knew that he would be spending much more time in the campus gym than he wanted to to make up for it.

Toeing his boots off and nudging them under the bench, he hung his coat up and set his messenger bag on the floor next to the bench. Lucy had been adament about the coat hooks and bench when they had moved in and started setting up the house, and now that he had lived with them for three months or so, Erik saw their usefulness. The mudroom had always been ideal, but now that the snow was falling and slush trailing everyone who went outside, Erik didn't know how they would have managed without it.

Christmas music was playing in the kitchen as he pushed the door open, and Lucy was moving with the beat, singing along as she slid a tray of something into the oven. Cooling racks filled with cookies dotted the counters, and Erik wondered just how many cookies his wife thought they needed.

After she set the timer, Lucy turned around, presumably back to the kitchen island where a large bowl and other ingredients were waiting for her. However, when she caught sight of Erik, hovering in the doorway eying the cookies, she left her baking behind, in favor of kissing him hello.

"I see you've been busy," he said, nodding to the cookies on the counter.

"One more type to go, and if my estimates are right, we'll have about two hundred cookies."

Erik looked at the racks, silently attempting to count all of them. _Two hundred cookies_. The gods were tempting him. "Lucy, I know it's the holidays and all, but do we really need so many cookies? I mean, we're going to have to spend a fair bit of time at the gym if we're going to eat all of them." _That sounds fair. Hopefully she won't think I'm calling her fat…_

"Oh, no, they're not all for us. I told Sorano that we'd host Christmas this year, to give her a break, and Laxus and the rest of Raijinshu house are coming for Christmas Eve, and I figured that I'd take a tray into work, both the DEA and ATF, for everyone. Hopefully this will get us to New Years, but we'll have to see." Lucy was back among her bowls, measuring ingredients with the ease that Erik knew he had, albiet in a chemistry lab.

Reeling from hunger and the amount of information that Lucy had just thrown at him, Erik picked apart her statement. "We're hosting Christmas this year," he repeated.

Pausing in her work, Lucy bit her lip as she looked up at him, nervousness on her face. "I hope that's alright. I mean, she and the others have hosted it all these years, and I figured since we've got plenty of space, and they haven't all been over yet…"

He didn't mind, in all honesty. Ever since the Seis had been pulled off the streets, they had spent Christmas Day together, the only family any of them had. Even Lucy hadn't been invited until this year, now that she was his wife. Erik was just surprised that she and Sorano had talked about it and planned everything already. Although, it was the third of December and finals were upon them. It was probably the right time to have stuff like this figured out.

Coming out of his thoughts, he realized that Lucy was growing increasingly nervous as he stood in silence. "It's fine. Don't worry about it, you just surprised me. No wonder you've been going all out decorating."

Her smile was brilliant. "Well, Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I get to spend it with you, so that's absolutely fantastic. That I have a house of my own to decorate is even better. Freed's fantastic, but he's OCD about the decorations and insists on doing it himself."

At that moment, Erik's stomach growled loudly, and Lucy jumped. "I'm sorry, I forgot! Behind you, on the counter, the crockpot has potatoe soup in it. It should be completely ready; all we need to do is cut up the bread and put the soup in bowls. If you don't mind doing that, I'll finish up this batch of cookie dough and get it in the oven."

Acquiesing, Erik rummaged in the cupboard for the soup bowls and looked around for a place to set them. As he did, he realized that the table was covered in a myriad assortment of cookie paraphenalia. "Lucy, where are we eating tonight?"

She paused in her mixing, glanced over at the table, and sucked in a breath. "Ah, looks like the coffee table. Sorry, I was decorating gingerbread men for a good part of the afternoon, and got delayed. Mainly because Pintrest had a bunch of really cute ideas. That's why I still have this batch left to go. Feel free to condense any of the racks; those have been cooling long enough."

Moving a tray full of pink cookies with what looked like Hersheys Kisses dropped into the center of them aside so he could reach the crockpot, Erik asked: "Why so many different types? Isn't it much more difficult that way?"

"Maybe," Lucy replied over the sound of the hand mixer. "But the best thing about Christmas cookies in the _variety_. Everyone gets their favorite type of cookie. Sugar for Sorano and Freed, who are purests. Cherry Chocolate Kisses for Evergreen and Richard. Gingerbread for Richard, and Sawyer. Dark Chocolate and Peppermint for Laxus and Midnight. And…" she said, causing Erik to look at her warily. "White Chocolate and Raspberry for you."

"But I don't like white chocolate," he pointed out, confused. It was one of the things they had discussed early in their friendship, the first winter they had known each other, when all of the coffee shops were coming out with white chocolate flavors. For Lucy, who remembered the smallest details, to forget something like this was…odd.

Her smirk was worrisome. "Oh, you like these. Trust me on that. They're in the oven now, and I'll finish them after dinner. You can try one then."

Curious, he carried their bowls of soup into the living room and placed them on the coffee table before going for the wooden cutting board that Lucy had deemed the breadboard. Placing it on the table between the bowls, he made one last trip into the kitchen for utensils, the bread, and his wife.

"Bring the drinks," he called as she swapped the cookie trays in the oven for the ones she had just prepared. "Everything else is ready."

"Can we watch another movie?" Lucy asked, coming in with a glass of water for each of them. "It can be our Friday night tradition."

Erik raised his eyebrow. "Are you going to make sure that I watch every Christmas cartoon there is out there?"

"Yep," Lucy said, rummaging through their DVD collection. "Now, _Santa Claus is Coming to Town_ or _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_?"

"Grinch," Erik said, cutting into the loaf of Italian bread that Lucy must have picked up on her way home from work at noon. "I was certainly channeling his spirit today."

"Bad day at the lab?" Lucy asked sympathetically, loading the DVD into the player and tossing him the remote.

"Would have been better if I had actually had a chance to be _in_ the lab," he muttered as the movie started playing. "I got stuck babysitting the freshmen all day long."

Lucy murmured her sympathy, but her attention was grabbed by the movie playing on the screen. He hadn't realized how much she loved Christmas movies until she had started watching one with him every week since Thanksgiving. Erik would never admit it, but he enjoyed this little tradition. Seeing how Lucy lit up, singing along and even saying some of the lines, made it completely worth it.

Later, as she cleaned up the kitchen, putting away the cookies, Erik studied the cookie she had handed him. Fresh from the cooling rack, it looked like a sugar cookie with a dollop of jam in the center, white chocolate drizzled on top. Warily, he bit into it, trusting Lucy's baking skills, but not sure that the cookie would overcome his dislike of white chocolate.

Surprisingly, it was a familiar taste. "Aren't these the cookies we used to have with tea, back when you lived with Levy?"

"That's how I knew you would like them," Lucy said cheerfully, placing artfully decorated sugar cookies in a container. "Usually I didn't bother with the white chocolate on top, and I experimented with different jams. But for Christmas, I wanted to use your favorite."

"Raspberry," Erik said, finishing the cookie. "I didn't think you'd notice," he confessed sheepishly.

"Oh, I know that you like nearly all types of jam," Lucy replied with a grin. "But you gravitate towards raspberry if you're given the chance. So I used raspberry for these."

Crossing the kitchen, Erik wrapped his arms around the blonde's waist, pulling her flush against him in a hug. "You're brilliant," he whispered, brushing the top of her head with a kiss. "I am so unbelievably lucky to have you as my wife."

"Hush you," Lucy mumbled in his arms. "You can't have another cookie tonight."

"Not exactly what I was going for, but now that you mention it…"

 *****So, after yesterday's angst fest, we have today's fluff fest. Just as a warning, we're back to the angst tomorrow. Many, many thanks to Beta for helping me finagle this prompt into an idea. And putting up with my procrastination. (Seriously, I left my computer to do some of my own baking, ended up cleaning the entire kitchen and a fair bit of the living room, just in avoidance of working on this.) I'll see you tomorrow for** ** _Energy_** **.*****


	7. Energy

**Energy**

Something had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since he came back from taking his lunch early so that he could get back to work. Not anything in particular, but a sense that something was off, _wrong_. Most people would push past that, dismiss it as silly paranoia, but that innate sense had saved Erik's life far too many times when he was Cobra of the Oracion Seis. So he went back to synthesizing his azides, routine busywork that wouldn't make him late for dinner, since he and Lucy had planned to celebrate their anniversary. Knowing the process by heart after so many times, he made the appropriate notes in his lab notebook before tucking it away in one of the drawers in the benches. If something happened to him in the lab, his former advisor would know where to look for the details of what he had been doing. It was their routine.

The sense of _wrongness_ only intensified as he went about preparing the azide. Erik felt himself growing tenser, more ready to spring into action the moment he had concrete _proof_ of what was bothering him. Part of him wondered if he shouldn't call Lucy, and tell her to be on her guard, or if he should call Macbeth and ask him to check out the house, but he decided to wait. Everyone else was at work, Lucy was at home all day today, so she was either on a cleaning spree or working on her novel, and would hate interruptions.

His phone ringing disturbed the silence of the lab, and Erik growled. He was so wound up that such a simple, familiar sound nearly had him dropping the flask that he had been working with. Finishing the procedure, he left the flask to rest in the rotary evaporator while he checked his phone. Usually, he would ignore it, but with how keyed up he was, he didn't want to risk missing a call from Lucy or Macbeth.

Stripping off his gloves, he set them by the bench next to his laboratory desk, where his phone rested. The call had cut off, likely going to voicemail or the caller having hung up, but he tapped the screen to wake it.

There was just enough time to register that it was an unfamiliar number before something exploded next to him, and Erik felt himself being propelled into the wall, his safety glasses sliding loose as the breath was driven out of him. The last thing he saw was a shower of glass fragments heading towards him.

* * *

When he woke up, everything was dark, his mind was fuzzy, and he hurt all over. Someone touched his hand, and he vaguely realized that Lucy was talking to him, but all he got out of the conversation was that he shouldn't open his eyes. Then there was someone else, talking at him, he thought irritably, not _to_ him, and then Lucy was back, gentle touches on his hand.

She was saying something, but fragmented memories were coming back to him, and he heard Macbeth's name and knew that he needed to tell them what happened. "There was an explosion," he managed after a few tries. "Everything…hurts."

"Which lab?" Macbeth was asking, and then questions about what he was doing and Erik heard Lucy scolding the other man, but he understood. If it had been Macbeth in the lab, he would have been asking the same questions.

"Azide," he managed to convey. "Check…notebook." Then he was drifting off again, vaguely aware of what was going on around him. When they moved him, he came back enough to realize that they were transporting him by elevator, and then Lucy was asking if he wanted to see people, and he realized that he did, even if Sorano was going to yell at him for scaring her. And then the Seis and Kinana were there, and Lucy wasn't and neither was Macbeth and he knew there was something more happening. Something about the explosion in his lab, and they were all government agents so it wasn't actually that surprising that there was an undercurrent of things not being said.

For the rest of the afternoon, he slipped in and out of consciousness, the pain meds doing their job but making it hard to focus on anything else. He heard a familiar clicking of keys on a keyboard and knew that Lucy was there and on her laptop, and in a _mood_ because nobody else hit the keys on their keyboard like that when things weren't going right. Macbeth and Kinana were there too, he knew that because others would address them when coming into the room, and he was pretty certain that Laxus was hovering by Lucy.

And then the typing stopped, and the room felt empty. Kina was by his side, he could hear her humming lightly over the constant hum of the machines, but he could somehow feel that Lucy wasn't in the room, and neither was her brother or Macbeth. The thought shocked him, spooked him. Lucy wouldn't leave. Even if it was just a cold, she hovered and fussed to the point where he felt more smothered by her presence than the congestion. It was because she lost her mother when she was younger, and she didn't want to lose someone again. With him in the hospital, there was no way she would leave for more time than necessary to use the bathroom.

"Lucy?" he rasped out, hearing Kinana's humming stop and fabric shift as she turned towards him. "Where is she?"

"She had to go downstairs," Kina said softly. "They're having a press conference."

"No," he growled, shifting uneasily. "They're not…dragging her out…'cause she's my…wife."

"It's nothing like that," Kina hurried to assure him, resting a hand on his. "She's there _leading_ the press conference."

"Why?" he asked, unable to understand. Who would be _that_ cruel as to make his wife give a press conference on the explosion that injured him?

"ATF and the DEA have opened a joint investigation," Kina murmured, gently touching his hand. "They needed to give an official statement, and Lucy was the only one _not_ at an intern level that they had."

"Strauss?" he asked, remembering that Mira's sister worked with Lucy.

"On vacation this week," Kina said slowly. "Levy's at home sick with food poisoning, and they finally fired Realight yesterday. Lucy got called in to write the statement, and she's giving the press conference right now."

That explained the angry typing. "Alone?" he asked, knowing that Lucy had a backbone of _steel_ , but on her own, with him in the hospital, in front of the press, a backbone of steel was nothing.

"Macbeth walked her down, and ATF and DEA each sent a representative. I think it's Fullbuster from ATF and Jellal for DEA."

 _Good_. Lucy and Fullbuster went all the way back to their freshman year of college and that weird family their floor had created. He'd have her back. Jellal was the Seis's team leader, another ex-criminal turned to better things. If he _didn't_ have her back, Macbeth and the others would slaughter him and frame it as an accident. It was hard to gain the Seis's trust, but once you had them in your corner, they wouldn't leave it for anything less than death or being betrayed.

It seemed like hours before Lucy returned, the clicking of her heels on the hospital floor a dead giveaway. Kina stood to greet her, and from the sounds, Erik thought that they hugged, and then Lucy was sitting down in Kina's chair, and reaching for his hand. "I'm here," she whispered, and Erik caught the jagged hints of _brokenness_ that she tried to hide from everyone else. " _I'm here now_."

* * *

It was three days after the explosion before anyone actually talked with Erik about the investigation. Macbeth and Laxus had taken his statement about what had happened leading up to the explosion, but nobody would tell him anything about the investigation progress itself.

"What about the phone call?" he asked Macbeth when Lucy was out of the room, being hauled down to the cafeteria by Laxus. "Did you trace that?"

"Your phone got knocked around pretty badly," Macbeth said tiredly, and Erik was willing to guess the dark circles around his eyes were back. "You'll have to replace it, but Mest did us a favor and pulled all of the information on it. The last call you got was from a payphone in the library. No prints, no cameras, nobody remembers seeing anyone there. We're having someone go through all of the footage on the doors, but so far we haven't found anything."

"They probably would have left through the tunnels," Erik agreed, remembering that while the areas around the doors of the library had security cameras, the underground system of tunnels didn't. "I would have, anyway."

"That's the general consensus," Macbeth sighed. "ATF says that the explosives were pretty standard- no way to track him that way. Don't take this the wrong way, but putting the bomb under the shelves where you held all of the laboratory glassware was a stroke of genius. Malicious genius, but genius nonetheless."

"Do you think this was about me?" Erik asked softly, knowing that Lucy had to be on her way up soon. She barely left his side for anything, and her trips to the cafeteria were abnormally short.

Another sigh. "I don't know. Professionally, we're checking all possible options: personal grudges, professional grudges, terrorism…"

"But you think this is something different," Erik filled in.

A shift of fabric, like Macbeth had turned to look at him. Or maybe away from him. "It's a hunch," his best friend, closer than any brother, said slowly. "But I think this is an old grudge."

"Brain's in prison," Erik reminded him slowly. "The Seis are together, Grimoire Heart was put away two years ago, and they got Tartarus last year. That's the Balem Alliance all accounted for."

"People slip through the cracks," Macbeth said heavily. "I don't know anything for certain, and there's certainly not more than my gut to back me up here, but I think this is about us. About how we left the Seis."

"You think someone came after me because I worked with the DEA to get us all pardons and educations?" Erik said, sitting up. "That's what this is about?"

"Brain had another person working with him," Macbeth said slowly. "You probably never noticed because he didn't show off this guy, but since he kept me with him a lot, I saw the guy a few times. But I never got a name. The DEA never was able to track him down either. When we were busted, this guy was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I guess, the DEA wrote him off as a loss since nobody ever found any sign that he existed."

"You think this guy, Brain's buddy, might be out for revenge against me for blowing the whistle?"

"I don't know," Macbeth whispered, and Erik was shocked to hear traces of the fear that had been a constant part of his friend's life up until the moment they started to get their lives on track. "I really don't know."

* * *

"Damn it," Erik cursed as he lost his place again. A rustle of fabric, and Lucy was out of her chair and by his side.

"What's wrong?" she murmured, and he smelled her favorite shampoo as she leaned over to see what he was doing. _Good. Someone got her to go home last night and at least shower there._

"Braille," he muttered in disgust, sliding the workbook away from him. "I know Freed's trying to be useful, but we don't even know if I'm going to be blind yet."

"It's always a useful skill to learn," Lucy countered slowly. "You never know when you might need it."

"How about we wait until they take the bandages off tomorrow and deal with it then?" he asked, knowing that he sounded like a petulant child, but unable to summon up the emotional strength to act any differently.

"They were pretty confident that you'd lost at least one eye," Lucy said shortly, and he turned to face her in surprise. While she had been quiet during the week since the explosion, he had attributed it to fear, to relief, to exhaustion…but this? This sounded a lot like bitterness.

"Eight years of work, and for what? Two years, just two years of research and then you get put out to pasture? Even if they keep you on, you'll never be able to work in the lab again. Not on _your_ projects. All of those hours you spent writing your dissertation, the months of lab work…it's all down the drain. At best, they'll saddle you with graduate students to do your lab work. More likely they'll shunt you into doing lectures only, teaching bratty little freshmen general chemistry because it's a requirement to graduate. It's a waste, and it's all that little…"

Never before had he wished to see the expression on someone's face as much as he wanted to see Lucy's in that moment. Her words, the outpouring of bitterness…they shocked him. His wife was indignant on his behalf. _Bitter_ on his behalf, and he didn't quite know how to respond to that.

Too much of his childhood had been spent living moment to moment out of necessity. Not knowing whether or not you'd see tomorrow because some two-bit dealer managed to get the drop on you tended to make you pretty casual when it came to things like life or death. Most of the time, you rolled with the punches, accepted that someone got the better of you, and planned to make sure they understood exactly _why_ it was a bad idea to do something like that.

Macbeth and the others would make whoever set the bomb pay, he was as sure of that as he was that he would never stop loving Lucy. It wasn't his fight anymore.

Lucy was still raging, her words harsh and cynical, and Erik was amazed at how he had missed how much she was hurting. The initial hurt had festered, become a poison that was slowly eating away at her, and he hadn't noticed. Reaching out, gauging her position by the sound of her voice, he fumbled until he had his arms on her waist, and then lifted her up, pulling her onto the hospital bed with him.

Her words cut off in a startled squeak, and he cuddled her close to his chest, ignoring the wires connecting him to the monitors. It had been a week since he held her in his arms, and even if he was still covered in bandages in most places from where they had to remove the glass fragments during surgery, he wanted to hold her, feel her skin against the few places without bandages.

"Erik?" she breathed as he buried his nose in her hair, taking in the scents that made her _Lucy_.

"Shhh," he whispered, shifting her into what he presumed was a more comfortable position. "Just lay here with me for a while. I want to hold you."

She shifted a bit, probably making herself comfortable for a prolonged stay, and he tightened his arms around her, brushing a kiss across the top of her head. "I may be blind when they take the bandages off," he said slowly. "We don't know. If I am, there's going to be a lot of changes for me, and a lot of them are going to be around my lab. You're right, I probably won't be able to work with the azides any more. They're too unstable. But you know how interested I've always been in poisons, and they just hired on a new guy in the biology department who works on isolating poisons out of snakes for medical use. The chair and I were talking, before this even happened, about maybe getting him onboard for a joint project of sorts, working on synthesizing these poisons. Maybe the timeline for that just got moved up a bit."

"Second, there's no way in hell they'd keep me out of the lab for good. We'd all have an adjustment period, where I learned to work in the lab without my eyes, but you can bet that I'd find a way to make it work, even if I had to kidnap Wendy out of med school to use her as a lab assistant. They wouldn't dare inflict me on freshmen, but juniors and seniors might be an option."

"Third," he said, drawing back slightly, wishing that he could look into her eyes and make sure that she was understanding him. "I will _never_ settle. Not for anything. If I don't have my eyes than I will make myself a life where I can do whatever the hell I want. Even if it means I have to study medicine and try and get myself my eyes back before I can go back to whatever it is I want. So don't worry. I don't plan on becoming someone else just because some bastard decided that I didn't need my eyes. I'm right here, and for me to do anything other than whatever the hell I want to do because of what happened is letting the asshole win."

She was drawing shuddering breaths, and then Erik felt the hot tears against the sliver of skin along his jaw that wasn't bandaged. Unable to do much more than hold her, stroking her back gently, he let his wife sob away her frustrations until she fell into a light doze against his chest.

* * *

"Okay Dr. Drake, let's try opening your eyes now."

Cautiously Erik let his eye drift open. The empty space where his other eye had been was a dark hole in his vision, but he could see just fine.

After a minute, the significance of that sunk in. _He could see_. No blurriness, no other signs that his undamaged eye might turn on him and leave him completely blind. Their worst fears had been for nothing.

In the corner of the room, he heard a hitched sob, and he saw Lucy there. Saw her mussed hair and yoga pants and the bags around her eyes and thought there was never anything in the world more beautiful than his wife.

"Hope you haven't been losing sleep over me," he said casually. "Or was Macbeth trying to give you makeup lessons again?" It had happened before. The man was a genius at doing his own makeup, but terrible when trying to do someone else's.

That startled a laugh out of her, and then her eyes widened. "You can _see_ ," Lucy breathed, and the look of joy on her face was so brilliant Erik was sure that the sun had just dimmed in comparison. "You can _see_!"

The doctor forced him to do a few stupid tests, but then they were left alone, and Lucy was still crying as she climbed into his hospital bed to curl against his chest, but this time they were tears of happiness. And if a few leaked out of his good eye, well, neither of them would tell.

* * *

Fixing the depth perception issue was easier said than done. For the first week of being home, he bumped into what seemed like every piece of furniture in the house.

Twice.

Lucy had started out the week by hovering anxiously nearby, bags of ice on offer, but he had snapped and snarled enough that she retreated to their upstairs study and locked herself in with headphones and enough snacks to feed an army for a month. He would have been offended or concerned, depending on his mood at any given moment, but he had learned that emotional times fed her writing muse.

Eventually he made it for over twenty four hours without bumping into things, and started to focus on other things. Like putting his career back together.

It took a lot of convincing to get Lucy out of the study during the daylight and into the car so she could drive him to work. Technically he could get behind the wheel at any time, but Lucy had talked him into taking a refresher course before getting out on the road for real. But as he walked into the chemistry building, he was met with the biggest surprise of the whole affair.

The first student who saw him started applauding. Slowly it spread through the students amassed there, waiting for classes, studying, or simply praying to whatever gods they knew that they might pass their test. People were hanging over the railings on the upper floors applauding until the entire building echoed with the sound.

Erik felt the tips of his ears burning. He had himself pegged as the least popular professor in the department. No paper crossed his desk without being covered in red ink before it left. There was that time he made a freshman cry. Despite the temptation, he stayed away from RateMyProfessor.

As suddenly as the applause began, it ended. He found himself being confronted by a flood of students, shaking his hand, clapping him on the back. A few girls even tried to hug him. Bewildered, he made his way through the crowd and up to the department office on the second floor, where he shut the door and locked it after checking to make sure there were no students inside.

A familiar face poked their head out of one of the open office doors, grinning as they saw him. "Erik! I thought I smelt your familiar parfum~"

He tried not to wince. Ichiya Kotobuki was arguably the most successful professor in residence at Magnolia University.

Because of that, he was the head of the Chemistry department, where most of his research was based. The man was a genius with scents, and most of the perfume companies came to him when they needed something. Most of the published work in the field either was written by him or cited him.

But he was eccentric. And that was putting it lightly.

Edging away from the door, Erik made a beeline for the door opposite Ichiya's. "Sorry sir, just need to talk with Dr. Broom about the expense reports for my lab…"

Once inside the office, he shut the door. Turning around, he found the assistant department head grinning behind the stacks of paperwork covering his desk. "I see you didn't miss our fearless leader while you were gone."

Dropping into the only open chair in the office, Erik groaned. "He filled the hospital room with flowers. I had to get the nurses to send them up to the pediatric ward to keep them from smothering me."

Doctor Brandon Broom, the real mover and shaker in the department laughed. "Be thankful that I kept him out of your lab after they started cleaning it up then. Now, did you actually have business with me or did you use me as a convenient escape?"

"Business, actually," Erik said, reaching into his bag for the thin binder he had used to store his recently revised research proposals. "I'm going to stop working with the azides, at least for a while. That was more Dr. Saunder's research than mine, and you've got Dr. Cubelios coming in next year. We talked about potentially working on some joint projects, but I think I'd like to move up the timeframe on that."

Broom took the binder and flipped through it, pausing at the section that detailed financial expenditures. "We did manage to recover about half of what you've listed here," he said mildly, tapping the page. "It wasn't a complete loss."

"I wrote up the worst case scenario," Erik replied with a shrug. "From the few pictures I convinced them to show me, the entire lab looked trashed."

"We can work with this. Do you mind if I hold on to this and send a copy to Dr. Cubelios, get her input on it?"

"Sure. How is the restoration going?" Erik asked after a pause. He wanted to know, but at the same time wasn't sure he wanted to hear how badly his lab had been destroyed. Macbeth and the others had been particularly cagey on that front.

"It's almost done. Most of the issues came from letting ATF and the DEA finish their investigation, and then getting contractors in there. But it should be all set by the end of term, ready for you to start in the new year. Have you thought about when you're coming back?"

He had, actually. It was getting a bit boring around the house with no students to scare. "Probably for the next term. I can take the classes we planned, and spend the time until then readjusting to navigating without my peripherals. It's not a big deal, but it is something that takes some getting used to."

"Why don't you go take a look at your lab, let me know if there's anything else that needs to be changed?" Broom suggested, rummaging in his desk drawer for something. "Here's the keys. We changed the locks, as a precaution. Only you and I have them at the moment. If you have any trash, let me know and I'll arrange a supervised pickup. Oh, and the new code is the day you graduated, but you'll have to change that."

Erik whistled in appreciation. "I've seen government labs less secured than this, and mine was already pretty secure to begin with."

Broom shrugged, shuffling some of the papers on his desk. "We don't like someone blowing up our laboratories. Makes our insurance rates go up and then EHS is on my case. Especially if one of my professors is caught in it. So now you have your own little Fort Knox. Appreciate it, Drake. I don't want to see your wife crying on TV again."

"Where did you see that?" Macbeth had gotten him every piece of footage that was shown about the explosion. Lucy had been in several, since she had been forced to do the press conference, but she was collected in each of them.

The assistant department head ran his hand through his hair, colored, Erik realized only now, just like broom straw. Only he would pick up on that particular detail after spending five minutes cursing out the broom they kept at home for tripping him. "I saw the press conference she gave. And I've known her for the past four years, since you two kept hanging out in the student lounges. I've seen her calm and collected, taking on that one grad student who tried to push her around, and that wasn't it. Everyone else may have bought it, but those of us who know your wife know that she was either about to burst into tears or start a rampage that would have ended only when the bastard was caught. Or dead."

With a grimace, Erik had to nod in agreement. Lucy, in the public eye, got colder and more collected the more emotional she felt. It was a defense mechanism, she had explained one day when they were talking about it. He had been able to see the heartbreak she was holding back, but he didn't know anyone else would.

A knock on the door interrupted their conversation, and a familiar dirty blond poked his head in. "Bran, you about…Oh, didn't see you there Drake. Good to have you back."

Dr. Max Alors, the Geology department's newest rising star was a familiar face in the Chemistry department. For one, he collaborated often with Dr. Broom, whose research focused on environmental geochemistry. But in truth, the bulk of the department was aware that the two men were dating and most thought it was adorable the way they tried to hide it.

"I was just leaving," Erik said, checking his watch as he stood. "I'll leave you two to your lunch date."

Chuckling as he listened to the indignant squawks that followed him out, Erik left the department office and headed down to his lab. The applause had stopped, which was a relief, but the students seemed to go out of their way to smile at him and tell him that they were glad he was back.

At the door to his lab, Erik stopped, fingering the new key. The door was brand new, the paint unmarred and shiny. From the window, he could see a brief glimpse of the familiar lab, but one far cleaner and newer than the one that he had nearly died in.

As he inserted the key, and punched in the familiar code, Erik tried to stop his hands from shaking. It was natural to be nervous about returning to his lab. With his history, he had an intuitive grasp of survivor psychology, gained the hard way and from the mandatory visits with the state assigned psychologist. But it didn't stop him from feeling wary of the lab.

He took two steps inside before stopping. Whoever Broom had hired to get the job done had done a good job. Everything was pretty much as he had set it up, shelves empty and waiting to be filled where they had to replace them, others still full of bottles and equipment that had survived the blast.

Macbeth had been hesitant to tell him, but the current working theory was that the bomb had been meant to kill him. Or at least do serious damage. It was only luck that the glass fragments hadn't cut an artery, and the fact that he always wore multiple layers had likely saved his life, if not kept him from having a lot more scars from the whole affair.

Now, standing in his lab, he took deep breaths, trying to force his heart rate down. Once he had gotten out of the Seis, he had thought that it was all over. A part of him still thirsted for the wonderfully senseless physical release he had gotten from the violence, but he had learned to redirect it. Harness it. But he was still dangerous, for all that he'd been out of the game. Erik spent as much time in the gym as any of the DEA or ATF agents he knew, and routinely kept up with them based on his own observations and friendly spars with his old gang mates. Yet he was retired from all that, finding his place in the laboratories that had become home until he met Lucy and made a home with her.

Erik had considered petitioning to join the investigation. It would satisfy his desire to _find_ the sorry bastard that almost destroyed him. Yet he knew that they wouldn't allow him to participate, even off the record if Macbeth and the others would help him. Right now he needed to let the professionals take care of the matter, focus on Lucy and navigating life without an eye. It was a small price to pay when he looked at what the other alternatives had been.

* * *

He was in lab again when the feeling struck. The sense of unease that had churned in his gut during the hours leading up to the first bombing attempt. This time though, he didn't ignore it.

Stopping his lecture to the group of freshmen attempting to pass their second semester of general chemistry, he pulled his gloves off. "Get your damn glasses on, and put on your coats," he snapped, making sure his own safety glasses were in place. He didn't want to send them out, not before he knew if it was a false alarm or not.

Confused, but trained well enough to jump to follow whatever he ordered in _that_ tone of voice, they huddled together around the tables in the teaching laboratory, safety glasses on and coats pulled over lab coats. Satisfied that they were as safe as he could make them for the moment, he motioned for his TAs to join the students. Alone, he walked the perimeter of the room, carefully sweeping for explosives or other foreign devices the way Laxus had taught him before the term started. Nothing showed up, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Going after him was one thing, but taking out students was a line he wouldn't have crossed even during his worst days.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cellphone. Hitting a number, he waited for it to connect.

Voicemail.

Swearing loud enough to make some of the more timid freshmen shrink a little in their seats, he tried again.

Five numbers in total. All voicemail.

Now even the most hardened of his TAs was shrinking at the viciousness his cursing had reached.

Six numbers. Still voicemail.

Seven numbers.

Opening the web browser, he looked up one more number, praying that it might get him somewhere but a deepening spiral of worry.

"Fairy Tail, how may I help you?"

He almost sagged with relief at the sound of Kinana's familiar voice. "Kina, it's me. Are the others there?"

"No, they're not here. Erik, what's wrong?"

"What about Sparky and his team?"

"They're not here. What's going on?"

"Nobody's answering their damn phones Kina. Not Sparky, not any of the Seis." His voice cracked. "Not Lucy."

"Why do you need them?" Kinana demanded, and he could picture her concerned face as she asked: "Erik, are you okay?"

"It's my gut Kina, I've got a feeling. Nobody's there? Not Tramp Stamp or Titania's merry band of psychos?"

"None of them," she said, and he could hear the tremble in her voice. "It's quiet here tonight."

"Tell the she-demon to get ahold of her boyfriend," he snapped, worry overriding his normal behavior with his oldest friend. "I'm going to try getting Dory to pick up his damn phone, but I'm heading for the house. Keep trying the Seis for me Kina. Tell them what I told you."

"Erik?" another voice said as a new line clicked in. "It's Mirajane. What's going on?"

"No time, she-demon," he hissed. "Get your boyfriend on the phone and tell him to call me." Hanging up, he looked at the group of students cowering in the center of the teaching lab. "What are you waiting for? Get your things and leave. TAs, one of you lock the door. Class cancelled."

Tossing his glasses to the side, he stripped off his lab coat, barely stopping to grab his winter coat from the hook next to the door on his way out. Lucy _always_ picked up his calls, after his accident. _Always_.

A short drive, and he was bounding up the steps to the back door, forcing his key in the lock and wrenching it open without preamble. "Lucy, are you here? Lucy?"

The uneasiness in his gut got worse as he saw the clean kitchen. She was supposed to have been at work and be home by now. There should be dishes from her dinner on the counter next to the sink. Lights on.

Methodically he swept the house, looking for anything out of place, but everything _was_ in its place. Just like Lucy left it in the mornings.

Opening the front door to see if she had picked up the mail, he found a package wrapped in brown paper on the doorstep. Warily he stepped over it before closing the door. If it was another bomb, he didn't want it to explode into the house.

Digging out his cellphone, he got Kinana on the line.

"Erik, nobody's picking up their phones," she said, breath coming in quick pants like she had been running. "Mira's trying her old contacts, but nobody knows anything. All we've been able to find out is that they got a lead…"

"On my case?" he guessed, carefully running his fingers down the sides of the package. "Figures. They're probably in ops mode- no personal calls until it's over. That would explain why all of them are gone, since Dory's on loan to them for this."

"What about Lucy?" Kinana asked tentatively. "Is she at the house?"

"No," he said hoarsely, pulling his pocket knife out of his back pocket and slitting the brown paper carefully open. "It looks like she didn't make it home yet."

"Her office says she left," Kinana murmured softly. "I asked if they had kept her to work on a project, since everyone else is apparently in the field, and they told me she left at her usual time."

"Have the she-demon trace her car," Erik grunted, delicately unpeeling the paper from the box it surrounded. "If she's not at work and she's not at the house, then something happened between here and there."

"You sound like you're doing something," Kinana asked suspiciously after she had called out to her fellow barmaid. "Where are you?"

"Trying to see if there's a bomb on my front porch."

"Erik!" she screamed into the phone. "Call the cops! Let them deal with it!"

"Lucy is _missing_ ," he said flatly, carefully opening the box, afraid of what he might see inside. "The cops aren't going to want to handle this on their own, not with ATF and DEA having jurisdiction, and Macbeth thinks it might be someone from our past. If that's true, than calling the cops isn't going to help Lucy." _It might kill her_.

Kinana seemed to know what he was thinking. "Oh Erik…"

The box was open.

It wasn't a bomb.

But it might have been.

Inside was a map, worn and well creased, with a circle around an old warehouse Erik knew well. On top of the map was a lock of blonde hair, a piece of paper, and a timer, its seconds counting down.

With shaky hands, he picked up the paper and unfolded it.

 _Come alone_.

"I've got to go, Kina."

* * *

It wasn't that far of a drive.

Somehow, Erik thought it should be longer.

But as he parked his car on the same slushy streets he and the people he called his brothers and sister had once owned, he couldn't help but think that nothing really ever changed.

The same women in their short dresses and revealing tops prowled the street corners, too much makeup on their face but it still couldn't hide the desperation. Children cried from behind open apartment windows, the sounds bouncing off rusty fire escapes that probably didn't even come close to meeting city standards. Despite being plowed, the streets retained a thick layer of slush, just enough to be dangerous if you were trying to make a fast getaway. And in the alleys, you could feel eyes on you. Watching you to see if you were a threat to them.

He bared his teeth at the invisible watchers. They probably didn't remember him, but he had been more dangerous than most of them ever _dreamed_ of being. His phone was in the car, locked safely in the glove box. With Lucy's life on the line, he wasn't going to attempt any tricks.

As he entered the seedy warehouse, he paused for a moment, letting his eye adjust to the dim light before moving towards the back room, where a light could be seen from the gap under the door.

When he knocked, someone called for him to enter.

The first thing he noticed was that Lucy wasn't in the room. Which was…smart, he supposed. Something he might have done, back in the days when he ruled the streets. But right now, it did nothing to appease him.

"Nice of you to drop by… _Cobra_." The man behind the desk was stick thin, with large glassy eyes that protruded slightly, skin stretched over his skull. "I see you got my message."

"If I didn't know better," Erik said, letting himself take a seat across from the man behind the desk. "You wanted that timer to run out. Watch enough cop shows to see what a bomb wrapped like a package looks like? Certainly made me take my time with it."

"That _was_ an inspired touch, if I do say so," the man agreed, grinning. It was more like baring his teeth. "But it brought you here."

"Just because I have a few fancy pieces of paper doesn't mean I forgot where I came from," Erik replied coolly. "I've even picked up a few new tricks."

"From your government friends?" the man asked. "Oh, don't be surprised, I've been keeping an eye on you. On all of you, really. Midnight, Angel, Hoteye, Sawyer…and you Cobra. How could I let Zero's precious children out of my sight?"

"Easily," Erik answered. "We moved on with our lives. You're apparently stuck in the past. So, what did the bastard do to you?"

"Zero did nothing to me," the man said with another grin. "I was his right hand. Working in the shadows. How do you think he found you, all six of you lovely, wonderful, talented children? I was the one who did whatever he needed to have done, until you were trained enough to take over. Then I just watched from the sidelines, helping out when needed."

 _So there's Macbeth's missing man,_ Erik realized. Smothering the burn of anger he felt when the man's words reminded him of his training at Brain's hands ( _calling him by his real name is the first step towards making him human_ said the psychologist's voice in his head), Erik asked: "So what brings you out of the shadows now?"

"You're all moving on," the man whined. "Moving on and forgetting about who you truly are. I couldn't let you forget that."

"And your idea of a memory jog was to set a bomb in my laboratory?"

"You were always the most dangerous when wounded, Cobra," the man said almost lovingly. "Just like an animal."

He had enough of this conversation. "And taking Lucy?"

"You do know that she's an heiress, don't you Cobra? Street trash like you should never be with the likes of her. Zero and I had thought of matching you with Angel, or perhaps that little snake of yours from the gutters, when we were ready to raise the next generation, but you're quite unfit for an heiress. I'm surprised you haven't broken her yet."

Swallowing the bile at hearing about these plans to _breed_ him and the others like they had been animals, Erik lunged forward. The man was caught by surprise as he vaulted over the desk, and it was easy to put him in a headlock, slowly strangling him.

"I'm still just as dangerous," he whispered as the man struggled in his hold. "But right now that heiress is my wife, and you made the worst mistake of your life touching her."

With an aborted gasp, the man slumped down. Erik released him, checking his pulse. Slow, but there. Rummaging around in the desk, he found a few zipties and tied the man to the chair. Now all he had to do was find Lucy.

A cold blade at the back of his neck made him freeze.

"Are you the one running the show here?" a familiar voice asked, though he had never heard it this cold.

"Away from me a few hours, and you forget what I look like, Starlight?" he managed to rasp out as his throat swelled with relief. _She was safe_.

"Erik?" she breathed, and then she was spinning him around, and he saw her bright brown eyes gleaming with unshed tears. "It _is_ you. With the hat, and the light…"

Mindful of the knife still held in her hand, he gathered her up, holding her close. "I was so afraid," he whispered into her hair. "When I got home and saw that you were missing…"

At that moment, spotlights flooded through the windows, and a loud, familiar voice over the megaphone called: "Anyone inside, drop your weapons and come out quietly!"

Lucy giggled as she pulled away. "Sounds like Laxus is having a bad night."

"They must have gotten called away on a false lead," Erik agreed, crossing to the window and pulling his hat off. "It's about time you lot showed up!" he bellowed out the window after he forced it open.

Turning back to Lucy, he asked. "Was there anyone guarding you?"

"Nope," she said cheerfully, pulling a bobby pin out of his hair. "Apparently he was misinformed about the lock picking skills this heiress picked up along the way."

Chuckling Erik stuck his head back out the window. "I've got Lucy and the guy behind it all."

* * *

The aftermath, was…a bit of a letdown.

It turns out that the man they had captured had been Brain's right hand man, and had been attempting to revive the glory days. The doctors and prosecutors were trying to decide if they had enough to charge him as insane or not, but either way, he'd be going away for a long time.

Kinana had arrived with the cavalry, and spent the first hour repeatedly hitting Erik for going off without a word to anyone. She and Mira had finally managed to get through to Laxus and Jellal, who pulled their teams off a false trail and drafted Mest into finding Erik's phone and car. Both teams were unhappy to have arrived after it was all over, but nobody was complaining that Lucy was safe and sound.

By the time Erik got back to the house, the freshmen in his lab had managed to set the whole campus gossip mill afire, leading to more emails and phone calls than he wanted to think about inquiring about his safety, and Lucy's safety. For the rest of the semester, his freshmen were unusually subdued, almost in a state of respectful awe, when they dealt with him. It was highly unnerving. Apparently they had seen the news reports about his past.

Lucy seemed to have recovered without any ill effects, having received great praise for keeping calm and picking the lock on the door of the room she was being held captive in. When he teased her about pulling a knife on him, she blushed and swatted at him angrily, but he couldn't be too upset with her. If he hadn't been a friend, it was the right move to take.

Eventually, things settled down. The man went off to jail, the freshmen returned to being annoying little shits, and Lucy's biggest concern was over the plight of fictional characters.

Until, of course, she showed him the little stick with two lines showing in the window.

 *****And this is long overdue, but finally finished! Major kudos to my beta, who nagged, coaxed, and cajoled me through finishing. And thus ends CoLu Week 2016.**

 **Now for the fun announcements.**

 **First, I know I ah...disappeared. Whoops. Real life got a bit rough, and my muse took a vacation. It still keeps popping away for weekend trips. And to deposit new plot bunnies. So consider everything on a "when a chapter happens, you'll get it" update schedule.**

 **Second, there** ** _might_** **be a** ** _Chained Dragon_** **update soon. Depends on if the beta okays it. We'll see. But if it doesn't happen before Nov 1, don't expect it until December. Unless there's a miracle. Or two.**

 **Which brings me to the third (and final) announcement.**

 **I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is my ninth year (would be tenth if I hadn't skipped last year), and the second year I'm doing fanfiction. Now, in order to motivate myself (and to apologize for the long interruptions) I've decided that as soon as I get a chapter done, I'll post it. It may be daily updates, it may not. My goal is to finish the story, even if it goes over 50k. Title/summary/more details are still rather up in the air, but I've chosen to try something new: a** ** _Fairy Tail_** **/** ** _Harry Potter_** **crossover. What I** ** _can_** **tell you is that it will be set post-415/416 in** ** _Fairy Tail_** **and during** ** _Half Blood Prince_** **for** ** _Harry Potter_** **. More details to come, so keep an eye for that story whenever it posts. It's going to be unbeta'd, at least at first, so please forgive any errors in advance.**

 **That's all for now, thanks for everyone's patience!*****


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